Bosnia Croats Protest War Crimes Sentence
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KISELJAK, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Thousands of Bosnian Croats protested Wednesday against the U.N. war crimes tribunal’s decision to sentence former Bosnian Croat Gen. Tihomir Blaskic to 45 years in prison.
Several thousand demonstrated in Blaskic’s hometown, Kiseljak, northwest of the capital, Sarajevo. A TV cameraman said thousands more took to the streets in the ethnically divided southern city of Mostar.
Schools and shops in Kiseljak were closed, and students carried Croatian flags and Blaskic posters.
On Friday, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague sentenced Blaskic, the most senior figure to be tried, for orchestrating a deadly “ethnic cleansing” campaign against Muslims during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The sentence was the heaviest that the panel has handed down.
The court said Blaskic played a key role in an April 1993 incident in the central Lasva Valley, when Bosnian Croats killed more than 100 Muslim villagers in Ahmici.
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