A UN war crimes tribunal convicted a former Croatian army general of orchestrating a campaign of murder and plunder to drive around 200,000 Serbs from a rebel enclave, sentencing him to 24 years in prison.
Ante Gotovina, 55, was made a hero in his homeland for his role in a 1995 four-day blitz by Croatia to recapture the Krajina region and his arrest triggered protests in Croatia.
Mr. Gotovina was sentenced on Friday alongside police general Mladen Markac, who was jailed for 18 years.
Both were found guilty of orchestrating the killing of dozens of people and the shelling of towns and villages as Croat forces retook the Serb-controlled Krajina region in 1995.
They had pleaded not guilty.
A former army general Ivan Cermak who had been accused of the same crimes was acquitted.
Presiding judge Alphons Orie said Mr. Gotovina, together with Croatia's late president Franjo Tudjman and top military leadership, had been a member of criminal enterprise whose goal was the permanent removal of Serb population from Krajina.
"Mr Gotovina's order to unlawfully attack civilians and civilian objects amounted to significant contribution to the joint criminal enterprise," Mr. Orie said.
Mr. Gotovina's arrest in Spain's Canary Isles in 2005 helped remove an obstacle to Croatia's bid to join the European Union, which insists all Balkan states arrest war crimes suspects from the 1990s conflict before joining the bloc.