The release of Veselin Sljivancanin, a former Yugoslav People's Army commander convicted by the Hague war crimes tribunal to 10 years' imprisonment for the crime at Ovcara farm, Croatia, is not a political decision for Serbia, whose Justice Ministry holds that Croatia should have the same position.
Sljivancanin's release is a legal and not a political decision for Serbia, the ministry said on Friday, according to Serbia's B92 television.
"My message, primarily to the colleagues in Croatia, is they should not deal with politics and politically comment on such decisions," the ministry's secretary general, Slobodan Homen, told B92, pointing to the need to overcome everything that had happened in the 1990s.
Homen said the Hague tribunal's decision to release Sljivancanin proved that the peoples of the former Yugoslavia eventually managed to overcome the traumas from the 1990s.
The UN court decided to release Sljivancanin on July 5, after he served two thirds of his punishment, making the decision public on Thursday, a day after he was set free.
