Fikret Abdic, who was granted early release after serving two thirds of his sentence -- ten years and two months -- for war crimes committed in western Bosnia, was released from the Pula prison shortly after 9 AM Friday.
Outside the prison, Abdic was greeted by his family and some 2,000 sympathisers who arrived to Pula from Bosnia, Slovenia and other parts of Croatia on 35 buses and cars.
After leaving the prison, Abdic addressed some 100 Croatian and foreign reporters who are covering the event, saying that he will fight to revive Agrokomerce and raise it from the ashes.
The Karlovac County Court sentenced Abdic, who holds Bosnian and Croatian citizenship, to the maximum prison sentence of 20 years in 2003 but the Croatian Supreme Court eventually reduced it to 15. He was tried as a Croatian and a Bosnian citizen on an indictment filed by the Bosnian prosecution, based on an agreement on legal aid between the two governments.
Abdic was found guilty of breaching the Bosnian constitution by declaring the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia between 1993 and 1995 and, in his capacity as a local supreme commander, of opening camps and detention centres for those opposing the set-up of the self-declared province. At least three people died as a result of torture in those camps through which about 5,000 people passed.
