"The President of Croatia expects that, even though it is long overdue, a just sentence will be imposed on those who ordered the horrible crimes in Vukovar and elsewhere," the office said.

The president of the national association of former inmates of Serb-run prison camps, Danijel Rehak, said that the Hague tribunal's ruling was proof of "the big playing with the small".

"If the crime at Ovcara had been committed against Americans or the French, Sljivancanin would have probably ended up in the electric chair," Rehak said, adding that "after the tribunal's decisions that caused harm to Homeland War victims, it is now becoming increasingly obvious that representatives of the Croatian state who are in charge of cooperation with the Hague tribunal are not doing well the job they are paid for."

The wartime and current director of the Vukovar Hospital, Vesna Bosanac, described as shameful the reduction of Sljivancanin's sentence, adding that even the previous sentence of 17 years in prison was not severe enough.

The Hague tribunal on Wednesday altered the final judgement against Yugoslav army officer Veselin Sljivancanin for war crimes committed on the Ovcara farm outside the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991, reducing his prison sentence from 17 to 10 years.

Having reviewed the final judgement, the ICTY Appeals Chamber accepted the defence argument that Sljivancanin had not known about the withdrawal of military policemen from Ovcara and was therefore not guilty of the murder of 194 Croatian prisoners of war on the farm in November 1991. The prisoners were taken to the farm from the Vukovar Hospital.