THE HAGUE, Netherlands, May 5 (UPI) -- A U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands sentenced former Serb army officer Veselin Sljivancanin to 17 years in prison for war crimes in Croatia in 1991.
The U.N. appeals court in The Hague, acting on an appeal by prosecutors, increased Sljivancanin's original sentence from five years to 17 years for being responsible for killing 194 prisoners of war at the Ovcara farm outside the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in November 1991, the Serbian Web site B92 said Tuesday.
The tribunal said the original sentence, imposed in September 2007, was imprudent and inadequate.
Sljivancanin was a major in the former Serb-led Yugoslav army that besieged Vukovar for four months in 1991.
The tribunal upheld a 20-year sentence passed on Army Col. Mile Mrksic, who was a superior to Sljivancanin in the Vukovar siege.
