ZAGREB, Aug 2 (AFP) - Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic arrived in Zagreb Monday after being freed by the UN war crimes court which last week drastically reduced a 45-year jail sentence imposed over his role in Bosnia's war.
Blaskic, 43, arrived on a flight from Amsterdam accompanied by his wife Ratka, three children and lawyer.
The appeals chamber of the UN court in The Hague on Thursday acquitted Blaskic on all but three of 19 counts against him related to war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims, cutting his sentence from 45 years to nine.
He was released on Monday as he has already spent more than eight years in detention after giving himself up to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1996.
Blaskic, who led the Croatian forces in central Bosnia during most of the 1992-95 war, had originally been sentenced to one of the toughest terms ever handed down by the court.
The former general appealed the lower court's verdict in March 2000. He claimed that new documents from the Croatian intelligence service which only became available after his trial ended exonerated him and showed that others within the inner circle of Croatia's late nationalist president Franjo Tudjman were responsible for the crimes.
Although allies against the Bosnian Serbs during most of the Bosnian war, ethnic Croats and Muslims in Bosnia fought against each other for an 11 month period between 1993 and 1994 at a time when Blaskic commanded the Croatian forces in central Bosnia.
The then nationalist regime of Croatia, led by Tudjman who died in December 1999, backed a bid by ethnic Croats in central Bosnia to become part of Croatia.
Blaskic's convictions for ordering attacks on Muslim civilians in the central Bosnian Lasva valley, including the horrific massacre of over 100 people in the village of Ahmici on April 16, 1993, were all quashed.