The Zagreb County Court, in a re-trial on Friday, found Branimir Glavas and his co-defendants guilty of war crimes committed against Serbs in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991.

Glavas, who had served as defence commander in Osijek at the start of the 1991-95 war in Croatia, was sentenced to seven years in prison, while his co-defendants also received unconditional prison sentences. Al of them have the right to appeal.

Gordana Getos-Magdic, former sabotage and reconnaissance platoon commander, was sentenced to four years in prison, while platoon members Dino Kontic and Zdravko Dragic were sentenced to three years each.

Glavas and Getos-Magdic were present at the sentencing hearing while Kontic and Dragic did not show up.

At the beginning of the retrial in mid-January this year, the accused again pleaded not guilty.

Glavas’ sentence is one year less than at the first trial. He has served most of the sentence that was given to him at the previous trial.

At the initial trial in 2009, Glavas and the others were sentenced to several years in prison, but the final verdict was annulled by the Constitutional Court in 2015. By then, Glavas had served most of his eight-year sentence in prisons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he left before the first verdict was handed down.