Bosnian Muslim Gets Light War-Crimes Term

Bosnian Muslim woman Sabra Kulenovic , left, and Suada Mujic , center, gesture as they watching verdict on a former Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric accused of atrocities in the Srebrenica area, at the Union of Srebrenica woman in Sarajevo on Friday, June 30, 2006.The U.N. war crimes tribunal delivers its verdict Friday on Naser Oric, a Bosnian Muslim commander who is accused of killing Bosnian Serbs and wantonly destroying their villages. (AP Photo/Amel Emric) (Amel Emric - AP)

"Two years may appear to be a mild sentence, but I think even a minute is not fair," said defense witness Sabra Kolenovic.

In Belgrade, Serbia's President Boris Tadic called the sentence "scandalous."

"People who steal at supermarkets are given two-year prison sentences," Tadic said.

Slavko Jovicic, the deputy head of the Association of Serb War Prisoners, said his group was severing all cooperation with the chief prosecutor in The Hague to protest the sentence.

"We have handed over to Carla del Ponte evidence in the Oric case about the burning of villages and the murder of 3,000 civilians. She only charged him with the murder of six people," he said in Sarajevo.

Throughout Bosnia, an estimated 250,000 people were killed in the war between Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. About 16,500 bodies have been exhumed from more than 300 mass graves.

At the outbreak of the Bosnian war, Oric organized a militia to defend Srebrenica, and was later elected commander of the Muslim territorial defense. Oric's troops swept through Serb-occupied towns in 1992 to get weapons and food for the enclave's starving inhabitants. The fighters were followed by hordes of civilians who joined in the looting and burning, the judgment said.

Oric was replaced as Srebrenica commander just a few weeks before the Serbs overran the enclave, which by then was a U.N. safe zone supposedly protected by Dutch forces. But some Serbs blamed the misdeeds of his troops years earlier for provoking the slaughter.