A former police officer who commanded troops defending the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica was handed a lenient two-year sentence Friday for failing to prevent murder and torture of Serb captives. The U.N. war crimes tribunal, which imposed the sentence, ordered Naser Oric's immediate release since he has been in jail for more than three years. Oric, 39, was acquitted of direct involvement in the murder of prisoners in the early years of the 1992-95 Bosnia war. But the court found he had closed his eyes to their mistreatment and failed to punish their killers.
The three judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted him of all charges related to the wanton destruction of Serb villages. The trial was closely watched in the Balkans. Muslims, who hail Oric as a war hero for his three-year defense of the enclave against Serb forces, had anticipated exoneration. Serbs had hoped a conviction would counterbalance earlier judgments that found Bosnian Serbs guilty of genocide at Srebrenica. More than 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered there in one week in July 1995, Europe's worst civilian massacre since the Holocaust. |