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Lazarevic was also welcomed at the airport by Serbian labour minister Aleksandar Vulin, the head of Serbian army Ljubisa Dikovic, Serbian Orthodox bishop Teodosije and the mayor of Nis, Zoran Perisic. Photo: Printscreen

Top officials and hundreds of people carrying banners with slogans like “Welcome, general” and chanting “Lazarevic, our hero” greeted the freed war crimes convict after he was flown from the UN detention centre in The Hague to the Serbian town of Nis on Thursday.

The Serbian government sent its own plane and its defence and justice ministers to accompany Lazarevic, the former chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army’s Pristina Corps, who was granted early release after serving two-thirds of his 14-year prison sentence.

“I am thanking everyone who came here today to share with me and my family the happiness that I feel for managing to survive The Hague’s gallows,” Lazarevic told media at the airport.

“I have lost ten years of my life, and why? I have not been convicted of any specific crime, neither mine nor that of any member of the Pristina Corps,” he added.

Justice Minister Nikola Selakovic, who flew to the Netherlands along with Defence Minister Bratislav Gasic to bring Lazaravic back, said that was “a big day for Serbia”.

Lazarevic was also welcomed at the airport by Serbian labour minister Aleksandar Vulin, the head of Serbian army Ljubisa Dikovic, Serbian Orthodox bishop Teodosije and the mayor of Nis, Zoran Perisic.

Gasic and Selakovic and were the first Serbian ministers to ever accompany a convict home after release by the Hague Tribunal.

Officials declined to provide the reasons for the decision.

Lazarevic’s sentence was reduced from 15 to 14 years in prison in 2014 at an appeal that upheld his conviction for crimes against humanity during the Kosovo war in 1999.

According to the verdict, Lazarevic aided and abetted the deportation of Albanians from Kosovo and committed other inhumane acts by providing practical assistance to members of the Yugoslav Army.

As a result, some 11,000, Kosovo Albanians were killed and some 700,000 expelled to neighbouring Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia.

The court ruled that Lazarevic was aware of the fact that criminal acts were being committed against civilians and civilian property during Yugoslav Army and Serbian interior ministry operations in Kosovo.

“As the commander of the Pristina Corps, Lazarevic had de jure and de facto control over the units subordinated to him, including regular Yugoslav Army units and military territorial detachments,” the verdict said.

The Hague Tribunal’s appeals chamber also found that “Lazarevic provided practical assistance, encouragement, or moral support to members of the Yugoslav Army whom he knew intended to commit deportation and forcible transfer”.

In the same case, the former deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia Nikola Sainovic was sentenced to 18 years, the former chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army Dragoljub Ojdanic to 15 years, the former commander of the Yugoslav Army Nebojsa Pavkovic to 22 years and Sreten Lukic, the head of Serbia’s police forces in Kosovo, to 20 years.

Only Pavkovic and Lukic are still in prison. Both Ojdanic and Sainovic have already been granted early release and since then have lived in Belgrade.

Sainovic returned to politics in September, when he became a member of the executive board of the Socialist Party of Serbia, part of the country’s ruling coalition.

All men were close associates of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who was on trial for genocide and war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo. He died in 2006 in his cell before the trial finished.