War crimes general gets sentence cut by 11 years

IN a key decision, the UN war crimes tribunal court rejected a defence argument that the killing of 7,500 men in the UN-protected zone of Srebrenica in July 1995 did not amount to genocide, and said that the crime “should be called by its proper name”.

The appeals chamber of the court reduced the blame on Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic for genocide at Srebrenica and lowered his sentence by 11 years to 35 years in prison.

Krstic, 56, was convicted in 2001 of genocide. It is the only conviction handed down for the worst of crimes since the Yugoslav tribunal was created in 1993.