Serbia furious at release of Oric, the 'defender of Srebrenica'

The Balkans: Bosnian Muslims have welcomed home war-time commander Naser Oric amid furious reaction from Serb leaders to his release by the UN court at The Hague.

Oric (39) was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for failing to prevent his men from killing Serb prisoners around the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica early in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, but he was immediately freed, having already spent three years in detention.

The judges said they took into account the chaotic situation faced by a young and inexperienced Oric in refugee-filled Srebrenica.

But while more than 1,000 Bosnian Muslims greeted Oric at Sarajevo airport on Saturday, many Serbs condemned the verdict as proof of the UN tribunal's bias against Belgrade.

They say Oric's forces slaughtered scores of Serb civilians in villages close to Srebrenica, and that his reign of terror fuelled the hatred that was unleashed when Bosnian Serb troops under Ratko Mladic overran the town in July 1995.

Gen Mladic, who is still on the run, is accused of overseeing the murder of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since 1945.

"People who steal from a supermarket get a two-year sentence, and it is absolutely scandalous that such a small sentence is given to someone who committed a war crime," Serbia's pro-western president, Boris Tadic, said of the verdict against Oric.

"I was in Srebrenica . . . I saw coffins with bodies, pictures and lists of those murdered, met families of innocent victims. Those people demand criminals to be punished in an adequate way.

"That is the only way to end conflicts in this region and turn a new page."

Serbia's defence minister Zoran Stankovic, who as a military pathologist performed autopsies on slain Serb civilians around Srebrenica, said he was "disgusted" by a sentence that made no sense "from human, moral or legal point of view".

"I will insist on a revision of the proceedings against Oric," he said in reference to the UN court. "They did not even try him for the crimes against civilians."

The return of Oric is likely to widen the rift between Bosnia's communities, as the EU and US try to coax them into working more closely together.

Many Bosnian Muslims are angry that the so-called "defender of Srebrenica" was found guilty at all, but their president, Sulejman Tihic, said Oric's light sentence "showed clearly who was defending unarmed civilians and who was committing crimes".