U.N. War Crimes Court Jails ex-Yugoslav Army Chief for 27 Years

A U.N. court Tuesday sentenced ex-Yugoslav army chief Momcilo Perisic to 27 years in jail for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

"For these crimes the chamber by majority sentences you to a single term of 27 years in prison," Judge Bakone Moloto told Perisic, the highest ranking member of the former Yugoslav army, in a hearing before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague (ICTY).

While chief of the Yugoslav army's general staff between 1993 and 1998, Perisic gave personnel, officers, weapons and logistical support to the Bosnian Serb army (VRS) as well as the self-proclaimed republic of Krajina's army (SVK), knowing it would be used to commit crimes, the court heard during his three-year trial.

Perisic, 67, was found guilty on 12 of the 13 charges leveled against him, including for his role in the 1992-95 siege of Bosnian capital Sarajevo, the shelling of Zagreb by Croation Serbs in May 1995 -- and the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995.

Bosnian Serb forces murdered some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in Europe's worst atrocity since WWII.

But Moloto, clearing him of one count of extermination, said Perisic "could not have foreseen" that the Bosnian Serb army would exterminate Muslims after the enclave of Srebrenica fell.

Prosecutors in March asked for life imprisonment against Perisic, a close collaborator of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic who died in his Hague detention cell in 2006.