Biljana Plavsic, the former president of Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been released from prison in Sweden

She was serving an 11-year sentence for war crimes handed down in 2003 by the Yugoslavia tribunal in The Hague. Under Swedish law, she was allowed early release, having served two-thirds of the sentence.

Ms Plavsic was vice president of the Bosnian Serbs during the Bosnian War which lasted from 1992 to 1995. She succeeded Radovan Karadzic as president of Republika Srpska after the war.

In 2001, she gave herself up to the Yugoslavia tribunal which planned to try her on charges including genocide. She agreed to plead guilty to persecution on the condition that other, more serious, charges were dropped.

photo: Biljana Plavsic (ANP)