The guilty verdict which General Momcilo Perisic, wartime Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, received on Tuesday at the UN tribunal in The Hague, sentencing him to 27 years in prison, triggered off different responses in Serbia.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday sentenced General Perisic to 27 years in prison for aiding and abetting the siege of Sarajevo and the murder of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica, as well as for failure to punish his subordinates for missile attacks on Zagreb. He was acquitted of charges of aiding and abetting extermination as a crime against humanity in Srebrenica.
The head of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, Natasa Kandic, said today that the sentence was appropriate.
Kandic was quoted by the Beta news agency as saying that, however, it was hardly explicable how come that Perisic had effective control over the Croatian Serb rebel forces but that he did not have effective control over the Bosnian Serb forces led by Ratko Mladic, as cited in the judgement of the tribunal.
Serbian Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac said that the prison sentence in the Perisic case was "extremely high" which he said he regretted. The minister hopes that Perisic will lodge an appeal against the non-final ruling.
"I think that it is high time to put an end to all those indictments and verdicts and to turn to the future," Sutanovac said.
The head of the Serbian government's office for cooperation with the ICTY, Dusan Ignjatovic, was quoted by the Tanjug news agency as saying that the sentence "is rather high", adding that it is necessary to wait for a a detailed analysis.
Ignjatovic finds it significant that the trial chamber found that Perisic was not Mladic's superior. He also believes that Perisic will file an appeal and that the appeals chamber will render a final judgement.
Serb Radical Party official Dragan Todorovic was quoted by the Beta news agency as saying that the verdict was "terrible and shameful".
