Global Policy Forum

By Marlise Simons

In a controversial decision, the appeals court of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague yesterday threw out the conviction on major charges of a Bosnian Croat general and reduced his sentence to 9 years from 45 years. Gen. Tihomir Blaskic, 44, who has already spent eight years and four months in a tribunal cell, will be immediately freed. He will travel to Zagreb on Monday, court officials said.

The remarkable legal turnabout brought a sudden and dramatic end to a case unlike any other before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. General Blaskic has been at the center of United Nations' tribunal's most complex and longest running procedure, with the trial lasting two years and the appeal more than four. While others accused of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's have won appeals before him, General Blaskic will become the most senior official to be released. In a ruling covering 289 pages, the appeals court rejected most of the lower court's conclusions and threw out much of the earlier indictment against the general, including charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes against Muslims in Bosnia in 1993. The lower court had linked him to the cold-blooded killing of civilians at half a dozen villages, including a massacre in the village of Ahmici in what was then the Croatian-controlled region of western Bosnia.

The five-member appeals panel said the lower court had misinterpreted the law, made factual errors, obtained insufficient evidence and meted out unfair punishment. It upheld three lesser counts of war crimes for not adequately protecting detained civilians and not punishing subordinates who had wrongfully detained them. General Blaskic showed little emotion when the verdict was read, but his wife, Ratka Blaskic, and the couple's three children, who were in the public gallery, shrieked with joy, according to observers in the courtroom. Russel Hayman, the general's American defense lawyer, said by telephone: "I feel tremendous relief. My client has his life back and this ruling will enhance the credibility of the court." Bosnia Radio broadcast angry reactions from relatives of people murdered at Ahmici. One man who lost his parents said the decision made no sense and was a political game and a mockery of justice.

Lawyers at the tribunal said the ruling was likely to affect other cases now under appeal. It is also likely to stir much discussion at the court, with its international staff of more than 1,200. The lengthy ruling is an unusually explicit and strong reprimand of the work of the lower court and the senior justice who presided over it, Judge Claude Jorda of France. He has been president of the tribunal and has since become a judge at the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, which has not yet begun to hear cases. In a sweeping rejection of most of the charges against the general, the appeals court said that the lower court had been "wholly erroneous" in its assessment of the case and that there was no evidence that General Blaskic had ordered the crimes against civilians in Ahmici and neighboring villages in April 1993. It was then that Croatian units attacked Muslim villagers to create terror and make them flee. In Ahmici alone, more than 100 civilians were killed, many of them old people who burned in their own homes.

Thursday's ruling was not based only on errors made by the lower court. After General Blaskic's trial and sentencing, much new evidence became available that Franjo Tudjman, who was president of Croatia at the time, repeatedly refused to provide to the tribunal. After Mr. Tudjman's death in 1999, the files of the Croatian intelligence agency were discovered hidden at a military base near Split and the new Zagreb government ordered them opened in 2000. Several of the documents, made available to The New York Times, were addressed to President Tudjman and signed by his son, Mirsoslav Tudjman, Croatia's wartime intelligence director. Some described the killing of Muslim villagers during ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and they clearly seemed to exonerate General Blaskic, a Bosnian Croat Army colonel at the time. The documents instead implicated other political leaders who ran a parallel command and used military police units to terrorize and kill civilians as part of their ethnic cleansing campaign. General Blaskic's role was minor, one intelligence document said.

After his indictment, General Blaskic gave himself up to The Hague in 1996, at the urging of the Tudjman government. Two of the president's aides pledged that he would be exonerated and that they would provide the evidence, according to recordings made at a meeting. But the evidence never came. Croatian lawyers said that the evidence pointed to Mr. Tudjman and might have led to his own indictment. After the Croatian intelligence archives were opened, the defense asked for a new trial, but failed to gain one. But it appealed, armed with the new material. Mr. Hayman said he submitted more than 8,000 pages of new evidence. A number of witnesses, including British and Balkan military officers, testified in favor of General Blaskic. "We got a good decision today," Mr. Hayman said. "The first bench was way off on many points and the appeals court said so."