A UN war crimes tribunal has acquitted Yugoslav ex-army chief Momcilo Perisic on appeal and overturned his 27-year sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the bloody Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Defence lawyers hailed the appeal's outcome before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), saying it confirmed Belgrade had no hand in the crimes committed during Bosnia's brutal 1992-95 war in which some 100,000 people died.
Victim's groups however slammed the verdict, calling it a "political judgement", while ICTY prosecutors said it will have a major impact in the Balkans region.
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Appeals chamber Judge Theodor Meron ordered "the immediate release of Momcilo Perisic", a former right-hand man of late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
The judgement is the latest in a string of acquittals at the ICTY, but the freeing of a Serbian military leader will be welcomed in Belgrade where the court has been perceived as biased.
Perisic, 68, the Yugoslav army's highest-ranking officer, was in 2011 found guilty of 12 of 13 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The charges included helping the Bosnian Serb army murder and persecute Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, scene of Europe's worst wartime atrocity since World War II, and the shelling and sniping of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo during its infamous siege from 1992-95 and the siege of Croatia's Zagreb.
But the appeals chamber on Thursday ruled that "Mr Perisic's convictions for aiding and abetting must be reversed on the ground that not all the elements of aiding and abetting have been proven beyond reasonable doubt," according to Meron.
"Mr Perisic was not proved beyond reasonable doubt to have facilitated assistance specifically directed towards VRS (Bosnian Serb army) crimes in Sarajevo and Srebrenica," Meron said.
"Instead, a reasonable interpretation of the record is that VJ (Yugoslav army) aid facilitated by Mr Perisic was directed towards the Bosnian Serb army's general war effort rather than VRS crimes."
Perisic, dressed in a charcoal suit, light blue shirt and black-and-white spotted tie showed no emotion as the verdict was read.
His lawyer Novak Lukic praised the outcome.
"I feel great. He's a free man. The appeals chamber has confirmed what we have always been saying about his innocence," he told AFP.
Lukic said Perisic had gone back to the ICTY's nearby detention unit to pack his things "including 200 books."
"We are in the process of arranging his release from the detention unit and putting him onto a plane back to Belgrade," he said.
But Munira Subasic, president of the organisation representing victims and families of those who died at Srebrenica, slammed the court's decision.
"This was a political verdict. He really was the head of the Yugoslav army that provided all the war material to the Bosnian Serb army," she told AFP.
"Europe and the world, together with the appeals chamber showed that they did it for the benefit of criminals because we are Muslim," she said.
Frederik Swinnen, special advisor to ICTY prosecutor Serge Brammertz, said his office met victims ahead of the verdict.
"We know that this decision will have a major impact on the region, that victims will find it difficult to accept," Swinnen told AFP.
He noted that other former Yugoslav officials charged with serious crimes committed in Bosnia were awaiting verdicts before the ICTY.
But Perisic's acquittal means that no official from the Belgrade-controlled Yugoslav republic has now been convicted for crimes committed in Bosnia.
The verdict "establishes that there was no contribution by Yugoslavia towards crimes" committed in Bosnia, Perisic's lawyer Lukic said.
The only other senior Yugoslav official to be implicated for the Srebrenica massacre was strongman Milosevic, who died mid-trial in his The Hague detention cell in 2006.
In Belgrade, Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecutor's office told AFP: "It is significant that the court has ruled that Perisic did not breach international conventions on warfare, and did not find a causal and consequential connection between the Yugoslav army and war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia."
Perisic handed himself in to the ICTY in 2005 and his trial began in 2008.
