The leader of the Croatian association of former inmates of Serb-run concentration camps, Danijel Rehak, on Thursday described the Hague-based tribunal to release Veselin Sljivancanin from prison after serving two thirds of his term as shameful.
Zdravko Komsic, a member of that association, also expressed his shock at this decision.
This is also a shame and the defeat of the policy of the tribunal which is leading towards the equal treatment of the victim and the aggressor, Komsic said.
He recalled that apart from Sljivancanin, Mile Mrksic and Miroslav Radic, nobody was held to account for the crimes in Vukovar where he said 5,000 had been killed.
Sljivancanin, a former senior officer of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), guilty of aiding and abetting the murder of prisoners of war at the Ovcara farm after the fall of the Croatian town of Vukovar and sentenced to 10 years in prison, was released after having served two thirds of his term, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reported on earlier on Thursday.
The decision on Sljivancanin's release was made on 5 July and the document was classified. However. the information about this was made public after he left the prison.
Sljivancanin was convicted for the Ovcara atrocities against Croatians, committed in November 1991, and first sentenced to 17 years in prison. However, in 2010, this UN tribunal revised this sentence to 10 years.
