On Dec. 8, the Hague tribunal sentenced former Yugoslav People's Army officer Veselin Sljivancanin to 10 years in prison for the crime against Croat prisoners at the Ovcara farm near Vukovar in the fall of 1991.

The sentence is legally in effect.

For the first time ever, the Appeals Chamber has thus annulled its previous legally effective sentence, after special reconsideration, in which in May 2009 it sentenced Sljivancanin to 17 years in prison for helping and supporting the murder of 194 Croat prisoners at Ovcara, on Nov. 20 and 21, 1991.

Sljivancanin was found guilty for aiding and supporting the torture of these prisoners. For this act, he was sentenced in the first instance in 2007, to five years in prison, but the Appeals Chamber ruled on Dec. 8 that this sentence was too mild.