NETHERLANDS: The United Nations war crimes court in The Hague yesterday dramatically cut the sentence of a Bosnian Croat general from 45 years to nine, throwing out more than a dozen charges against him.
Gen Tihomir Blaskic's original sentence was a record. He was found guilty in 2000 of ordering the ethnic cleansing of Muslim civilians from Bosnia's Lasva Valley in 1993.
But appeal judges dropped 16 of the 19 charges he been convicted on, including that of driving Muslims from their homes during the Bosnian war. Convictions for three lesser charges, including using Muslims as human shields and as forced labour, were upheld.
Judges said they were cutting more than three-quarters of the sentence partly because "no reasonable trier of fact could have come to the conclusion beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant intended to effect forcible transfer of civilians".
Crucial to this appeal was Croatia's release of thousands of documents for the hearing, which had not been available at the trial.