UN Court Cuts Jail Term Of Bosnian Serb Leader

Momcilo Krajisnik, in the war crimes court in The Hague

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -- The UN criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has reduced the jail sentence of Bosnian Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik from 27 to 20 years, quashing some convictions from a 2006 judgment.

The appeal hearing threw out convictions for murder, extermination and persecution against the former Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker, arising from the 1992-1995 Bosnia war during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

But it upheld convictions for deportation and forcible transfer against Krajisnik, who was arrested and transferred to the tribunal in April 2000.

The tribunal concluded that "Krajisnik participated in a joint criminal enterprise, whose objective was to ethnically recompose the territories under the control of the Bosnian-Serb Republic by drastically reducing the proportion of non-Serbs."

Based in The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has jurisdiction over individuals responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.