Former Serb Leader Guilty of War Crimes

Former Serb rebel leader Milan Martic has been convicted of murder and other atrocities in Croatia in the early 1990s and sentenced to 35 years in jail. The international war crimes tribunal in the Hague found Martic guilty of ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs when he was leader of the so-called Krajina Serb republic.

Martic was a key player in Slobodan Milosevic's plan to create a "greater Serbia" by annexing parts of Bosnia and Croatia, and expelling non-Serbs from those territories. "Croats and other non-Serbs were targeted by discriminatory measures, forced removal, imprisonment and murder in an effort to drive them away," said the prosecutor in the trial.