General sentenced to prison

last updated 8 January 2015

The Hague, Netherlands

A Yugoslav general was sentenced to eight years in prison this week for the 1991 siege of Dubrovnik, a three-month barrage of shelling that razed most of the medieval town. The U.N. war crimes tribunal said that while Gen. Pavle Strugar did not order the shelling, he had ample opportunity to call it off. Dubrovnik, a coastal town in Croatia, was a protected World Heritage site because of its beautiful medieval churches and archways. It was not strategically important, and its destruction by the Serbian-led Yugoslav army, the tribunal said, was simply malicious. Strugar, 71, said he would appeal the sentence.