Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader rushed to Vukovar on Thursday to appease a crowd angered by unexpectedly light sentences given to former Yugoslav army officers charged with war crimes committed there in 1991.
The UN war crimes tribunal sentenced Mile Mrksic to 20 years in prison on Thursday for enabling the massacre of 194 people taken from a hospital in Vukovar, which was besieged by Yugoslav and rebel Serb troops in the autumn of 1991.
Judges sentenced a second former officer, Veselin Sljivancanin, to five years for torture but cleared him of the most serious charges. A third former officer, Miroslav Radic, was acquitted on all counts.
The rulings caused shock and anger in Croatia, where Vukovar is viewed as a symbol of the former Yugoslav republic's suffering at the start of the Balkan wars that followed the disintegration of the communist federation.
"We are appalled, disappointed and speechless," Katica Vlaho Drnic, a Vukovar survivor, told Croatian state TV at Ovcara, a mass grave site outside Vukovar.
Vukovar residents gathered to light candles in a silent protest after the verdicts were read out.
"My brother, aged 24, worked in that hospital, helping Croats and Serbs alike, and was killed there. We cannot help wondering what sort of a justice this is," Drnic said.
Sanader and members of his government made an unexpected appearance at Ovcara, where at least 264 people who had sought shelter in Vukovar's hospital were summarily executed. He briefly addressed the crowd on Thursday night.
"I don't know how many people should have been killed here for the perpetrators to get life sentences. But I appeal for calm at these difficult times, because we know what needs to be done and we know what the truth is," Sanader said in remarks shown on state TV.
Earlier on Thursday, Sanader, who faces a national election in November, said the verdicts were "shameful" and a "defeat of the whole idea of the Hague tribunal."
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic, usually a fervent supporter of the tribunal's work, said in a statement he found the sentences "utterly unacceptable."
Prosecutors had sought life sentences for all three.
Croatian officials insisted all along they were officers on the ground who were only following orders from commanders in Serbia.
After Vukovar fell to Yugoslav forces after a three-month siege, people sheltering in the hospital hoped to be evacuated in the presence of international observers.
Instead, several hundred were selected by Serb forces, then taken to a farm where they were beaten and shot dead, their bodies dumped into a mass grave.
Prosecutors said the group were largely civilians, but the judges ruled members of the Croat forces were also hiding in the hospital, pretending to be patients or hospital staff.
This invalidated charges of crimes against humanity, which apply only to atrocities against civilians.
The verdicts were met with disbelief among human rights workers in Serbia as well.
Radic was ordered released immediately.
Sljivancanin, who was arrested by Serb authorities in June 2003, will be credited for his time in detention and will be freed within a year.
Vukovar fell to the Serb army in November 1991 after a three-month siege that virtually leveled the town. The hospital was among the last places to be captured, and was packed with patients, hospital staff and civilians who took refuge in its corridors.
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