UN court sentences Bosnian Muslim for false testimony

Mar 15, 2010, 17:36 GMT

The Hague - A Bosnian Muslim who was bribed into lying to judges to favour the defence of a Bosnian Serb later convicted of war crimes has been sentenced to three months' imprisonment, officials at the Hague-based United Nations tribunal said Monday.

Zuhdija Tabakovic had confessed to accepting 1,000 euros (1,376 dollars) in return for providing false statements at the trial of Milan Lukic, a former head of the White Eagles paramilitary group.

Lukic was last year handed a life sentence by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) after being found guilty of murdering scores of Muslims in and around Visegrad, a town in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the early 1990s.

Tabakovic also admitted to finding two other men willing to sign two further statements prepared by Lukic's defence team in exchange for similar amounts of money.

Tabakovic has been in custody since December.

His decision to plea bargain on three of the six indictments that were brought against him mean he will be eligible for release later this week, court officials said.