by Stephanie van den Berg
THE HAGUE, Sept 1 (AFP) - The UN war crimes court handed down a heavy, 32-year prison sentence Wednesday against former Bosnian Serb leader Radoslav Brdjanin for a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Krajina region during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Brdjanin was convicted of aiding and abetting torture, persecution and willful killing and instigating deportations and forcible transfers, but he was acquitted of charges of genocide, the gravest of war crimes.
"On the basis of the evidence the trial chamber has not found beyond a reasonable doubt that genocide was committed in the relevant municipalities of the Autonomous Region of Krajina (ARK)," presiding judge Carmel Agius said.
The former civil engineer who went into politics just before the bloody war in Bosnia erupted in 1992, stared blankly ahead as the judges pronounced the verdict.
In the early years of the Bosnian war thousands of civilians in the Krajina region were held in the Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm camps. Images of emaciated prisoners from those camps shocked the world when they were first broadcast in the summer of 1992.
Many villages and towns throughout the Krajina, in northwestern Bosnia, were attacked. The judges calculated that at least 1,669 Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in these attacks.
In all the 1992-95 war in Bosnia left over 200,000 people dead.
The judges ruled that as head of the wartime crisis staff in the Krajina, Brdjanin was "the driving force" behind the decisions the Bosnian Serb leadership in the region.
"The conditions of life imposed on the non-Serb populations of the Bosnian Krajina and the military operations against towns and villages which were not military targets were undertaken with the sole purpose of driving people away," the court said.
Brdjanin made public statements "creating fear and hatred between Bosnian Serbs on the one hand and Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats on the other".
Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats left the Krajina region during the war. During Brdjanin's trial a number of witnesses testified that his public statements were the main reason why they left the area.
"His inactivity as well as his public attitude with respect to the camps and detention facilities" provided "moral encouragement and support to the members of the Bosnian Serb army and police to continue running these camps."
The prosecution had asked for a life sentence for Brdjanin. Prosecutor Joanna Korner told AFP that they had not yet decided whether to appeal or not.
Brdjanin's lawyers had asked for him to be acquitted on all charges, arguing that he had had no real power over the municipal authorities who committed the atrocities.
The verdict on Wednesday came more than two-and-a-half years after Brdjanin's trial started and five years after his arrest. His codefendant, Momir Talic, died of cancer in May 2003 before the trial ended.