Summary A UN court overturned former Yugoslav army chief convictions for war crimes in Balkans conflicts.
BELGRADE (AFP) - Former Yugoslav army chief Momcilo Perisic returned to Serbia on Friday after a UN court overturned his convictions for war crimes in the 1990s Balkans conflicts.
Perisic was jailed for 27 years for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Sarajevo and Srebrenica but was acquitted on appeal on Thursday.
"I went to the Hague wishing to defend the honour and the dignity of the army I belonged to, of the people and the state. Luckily, I managed to do so," Perisic said on his arrival from the Hague aboard a Serbian government plane.
The 68-year-old, Yugoslav army chief of staff from 1993 to 1998, was jailed by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2011.
He had been convicted of helping the Bosnian Serb army murder and persecuting 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and involvement in shelling and sniper attacks on the Bosnian capital Sarajevo during the 44-month siege, as well as the siege of Croatia s Zagreb.
Perisic was once the right-hand man of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died mid-trial in detention at the Hague in 2006.
Perisic s acquittal was hailed in Serbia as definitive proof that the Yugoslav army had not been involved in the conflict in Bosnia.
"I consider this as my modest contribution... to a final clearing of our people from the anathema related to the violation of the international warfare laws," he said.
