Judges yesterday jailed ex-Croatian General Ante Gotovina for 24 years and co-accused Mladen Markac for 18 years for war crimes and crimes against humanity but acquitted third defendant Ivan Cermak.

All three were accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of overseeing the killing of more than 300 Serbs in one of the bloodiest episodes of the 1991-95 Balkans conflict.

The court concurred with the prosecution claim of a joint criminal enterprise with the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman aimed at driving Croatian Serbs out of their “ancestral homelands” in the eastern Krajina region.

The Croatian government swiftly condemned the judgment shown live in central Zagreb, and there were angry reactions among the 4,000 people who gathered to watch it on a public screen.

Former French legionnaire Mr Gotovina, 55, is regarded as a national hero back home for his role during the war sparked by the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

The three defendants, all former Croatian generals, had denied the charges and Mr Gotovina’s lawyer Gregory Kehoe said he would appeal.

Prosecutors at the trial that opened in March 2008 had sought a 27-year jail term for Mr Gotovina, accusing him of having sought the “permanent removal of the ethnic Serb population from the Krajina region in Croatia” during the war for independence.

Mr Gotovina led a lightning offensive dubbed Operation Storm that recaptured Krajina from Serb rebels in 1995.

The prosecution said 324 Serbs were killed and “close to 90,000 Serbs were forcibly displaced with the clear intention that they never return”.