General Stanislav Galic was convicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on five counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes during the period he commanded the siege from 1992 to 1994. The siege continued for another year after he was transferred.

It was the UN court’s first conviction dealing exclusively with the siege, during the Bosnian war, which brought the world images of the so-called Sniper Alley and corpses of children killed while playing in the snow.

“Hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands injured from sniping and shelling incidents in the period covered by the indictment,” Alphons Orie, the presiding judge, said yesterday. “No civilian of Sarajevo was safe anywhere. He (Galic) actually controlled the pace and scale of those crimes.” Galic showed no emotion and shook hands with his lawyers before being led away.

A total of 171 witnesses were heard. There were more than 1,200 exhibits, including written reports, film, photographs, maps and sound-recordings, and reports from 15 experts.

During the siege of Sarajevo, Galic ordered his troops to fire on civilians while they were shopping, tending gardens, fetching water from the river or otherwise going about their daily lives.

Safe in their bunkers and trenches around the mountains that surround the Bosnian capital, the Bosnian Serbs avoided actual battles for territory as much as possible. Between slugs of strong home-made plum brandy they lobbed down mortars and shells on to civilians darting between wrecked buildings, or took pot-shots with high-powered snipers’ rifles as people queued for relief aid.

The trial has helped to highlight the extent of links between the Bosnian Serb forces and Serbia proper under President Milosevic, despite his repeated claims that Serbia itself was not at war.

The Sarajevo-Romanija corps was previously the 4th corps of the Second Military District of the Yugoslav Army. The personnel, arms and ammunition remained the same, merely the cap and uniform badges were replaced in the spring of 1992 as the Bosnian Serbs troops prepared for their onslaught on their former Yugoslav compatriots.

In the end the attack brought no military advantage to the besiegers. All of Sarajevo was ceded to the Muslim-Croat Federation at the 1995 Dayton accords that brought the Bosnian war to a close. Most Serbs fled, many setting their homes on fire.

Galic was also found guilty of murder and terror, the first time the court has dealt with the charge of terror, as defined in the 1949 Geneva Convention. The judges said: “The international tribunal does indeed have jurisdiction over the crime of attack on civilians and the crime of terror, which has an additional mental element.”

In a dissenting opinion Rafael Nieto-Navia, the Colombian judge, said that he did not consider that it was proved beyond reasonable doubt that Galic ordered attacks on civilians. He recommended a ten-year sentence.

Serb's Stranglehold on city

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