A former Serbian army commander convicted of war crimes during the late 1990s conflict with Kosovo returned, unrepentant, to his country Thursday after serving two-thirds of a jail sentence.
Vladimir Lazarevic, 66, voluntarily surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in 2005 and was sentenced to 15 years in jail for involvement in the expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
The sentence was later reduced to 14 years on appeal, including time in detention while he was awaiting trial, and he was granted release after two-thirds of the term in accordance with the tribunal's rules.
The 1998-1999 war pitted Serb forces against ethnic Albanian guerillas fighting for independence in the southern province of Kosovo.
Serbia pulled its forces from the territory following an 11-week NATO bombing campaign. Kosovo, whose 1.8 million people are predominantly ethnic Albanian, declared independence in 2008, a move Belgrade does not recognise.
Lazarevic was welcomed by various ministers as he arrived in the southern city of Nis on a Serbian government plane from the Netherlands, state television showed.
"I have lost ten years behind me, why? I have not been convicted for any concrete crime, nor have my 70,000 men," said a defiant Lazarevic.