The former head of the Crisis Staff of the Serb Autonomous Region (SAO) Krajina in Bosnia and Herzegovina and convicted war criminal Radoslav Brdjanin, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Hague Tribunal, was released due to health reasons, Banja Luka-based ATV wrote Saturday.

Brdjanin is expected to land at the Banja Luka Airport soon, after 23 years spent in prison.

The Hague Tribunal President of the Court, Carmel Agius, refused his requests for early release on several occasions, even though Brdjanin formally fulfilled the conditions.

After the verdict of the Hague Tribunal, Brdjanin served his sentence in Denmark, from where he was transferred to the custody of the Hague Mechanism for International Criminal Courts from prison in Denmark on September 14, last year.

The reason for his transfer was that Denmark informed the court in The Hague that according to all their laws Brdjanin had fulfilled the conditions for the release and that they no longer had the right to keep him in prison. Then they said that he could no longer serve his sentence in Denmark because that would violate his human rights.

He was supposed to remain in Scheveningen until the Hague Criminal Courts Mechanism made an agreement with another country to which he would be transferred to serve the remainder of his sentence or be released.

N1 reached out to his attorney as well as the Republika Srpska Army Veterans’ Association for comment, but neither could confirm Brdjanin's release.