Bosnian Serb war criminal Plavsic back in Serbia

By Ivan Nedeljkovic

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Radovan Karadzic's successor as Bosnian Serb president left Swedish prison on Tuesday and arrived in Belgrade after winning early release from her sentence for committing war crimes.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague convicted Biljana Plavsic in February 2003 but last month granted an early release, a decision criticised by Bosnian Muslim relatives of victims of the 1992-95 war but celebrated by Bosnian Serbs.

She was the only woman convicted in The Hague of war crimes during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Europe's worst fighting since World War Two.

"I don't know what to think being free after eight years," Plavsic told reporters before visiting her brother.

She wore a fur coat and at one point threw a kiss to the crowd upon arrival in central Belgrade with current Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik.

She had served two-thirds of an 11-year jail term for war crimes, and left Stockholm's airport early Tuesday morning.

Backed by the West, Plavsic, 79, became Bosnian Serb president in 1996, succeeding Karadzic, who on Monday boycotted the start of his trial at The Hague on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide at Srebrenica.

She pleaded guilty to persecution on political, racial and religious grounds by "inviting paramilitaries from Serbia to assist Bosnian Serb forces in effecting ethnic separation by force". Charges of genocide, extermination and murder were dropped as part of a plea bargain.