Enver Hadzihasanovic, the former commander of the Bosnian Army Third Corps, was sentenced to five years in prison and his subordinate Amir Kubura to two and a half years on grounds of command responsibility for cruel treatment, murders and looting.
The two men were acquitted of crimes which Mujaheddin forces from Arab countries had committed against Croat and Serb civilians and military prisoners of war in central Bosnia in 1993.
The trial chamber found that the prosecutors failed to prove that the Mujaheddin forces had been subordinated to the Third Corps before 12 August 1993 when the "El Mujaheed" unit was established and attached to the Corps.
Hadzihasanovic and Kubura were acquitted of most of the charges of violations of the laws and customs of war, including responsibility for a massacre in the village of Maline near Travnik on 8 June 1993, when Mujaheddin killed 24 Croat civilian and military prisoners of war, including a girl.
They were also acquitted of murder of four Croats in the village of Miletici on 24 April 1993, who were found mutilated, with their hands tied behind their backs and their throats slit.
Hadzihasanovic was acquitted of five out of seven counts of the indictment and was convicted for failing to take "necessary and reasonable measures to prevent or punish" the cruel treatment of about 250 Croats who were held by the Bosnian Army at six locations in Bugojno in July and August 1993, and of about 100 Croats held in the School of Music in Zenica.
The prisoners were held in inhumane conditions, starved, abused and brutally beaten, and some of them died as a result of beating.
Hadzihasanovic was also found guilty of "the killing by ritual beheading" of the Bosnian Serb detainee Dragan Popovic on 21 October 1993 in the Mujaheddin camp in the village of Orasac in the Bila valley of central Bosnia.
Kubura, who commanded the Seventh Muslim Brigade within the Third Corps, was acquitted of six out of seven counts and found guilty of "wanton plunder" by his troops in the Zenica and Travnik areas in the summer of 1993 and in the Vares area in November of the same year.
Presiding judge Jean-Claude Antonetti said that the 828 days the accused had spent in detention would be credited towards their sentences.
Since they have spent about two years and three months in detention, Kubura has less than three months to serve out his sentence and Hadzihasanovic two years and nine months. Considering the tribunal's practice to release the accused after serving two-thirds of their sentence, Kubura's lawyers can file such a request already now, while those representing Hadzihasanovic will be able to do so in April 2007.