The appeals chamber today announced a confidential decision fully rejecting the prosecution motion for review of the final judgement in the Blaskic case, spokesman Refik Hodzic said.
Hodzic said the content of the decision was classified to protect the identity of the witnesses, but added that a redacted version would be made public over the next few days.
"As expected, justice has prevailed," Blaskic's defence counsel Anto Nobilo told Hina in a brief comment on the news.
"It's hard to say how I feel after all these years. On April 1 this year it was a full ten years of expectation, anxiety and uncertainty," Blaskic told Hina by telephone, thanking his defence team for their dedicated work.
In March 2000, Blaskic was sentenced to 45 years in prison for war crimes committed against the Muslim population in the Lasva river valley of central Bosnia in 1993, including a massacre in the village of Ahmici.
On July 29, 2004 the appeals chamber almost fully upheld his appeal and new defence evidence, reducing his sentence to nine years and ordering his immediate release because by then he had spent eight years and four months in the tribunal's custody.
The prosecution filed the review request in July 2005 based on new evidence.