Belgrade/Zagreb  - There was anger in Serbia Wednesday at the decision of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to more than triple the prison sentence of a convicted war criminal.

The Hague-based Appeals Chamber of the ICTY increased Veselin Sljivancanin's sentence from five to 17 years Tuesday for his role in the torture and murder of 200 Croats at the Ovcara farm following the Yugoslav Army's siege of Vukovar, Croatia in 1991.

The court also upheld an earlier 20-year sentence handed down former Yugoslav Army officer Mile Mrksic for his role in the murder and torture of prisoners.

Sljivancanin, who had already been in detention at the ICTY since mid-2003, was immediately released when the court controversially sentenced him in September 2007. Now he will return to prison for 12 more years.

A third officer, Mile Radic, was again cleared of charges in relation to the killings.

"Our public will find it hard to understand the drastically harsher sentencing of ... Sljivancanin," the Serbian council in charge of relations with the ICTY said following the verdict.

With the majority of Serbs already seeing the ICTY as an instrument of international pressure on Belgrade, the latest verdict "will be another factor contributing to the lack of trust in the tribunal's impartiality," the council said.

Right-wing newspapers, such as Press and Kurir, described the ruling as a "new rape" and "scandal" on their front pages and carried statements from nationalist politicians criticising the ICTY.

Unlike in 2007, when the original ruling caused an outrage in both countries, reactions in Croatia this time were in stark contrast to those in Serbia.

"The Hague righted an injustice" and "the killer from Ovcara sees justice" were some of the typical headlines in Wednesday's Croatian newspapers. "The Appeals Chamber partially righted the shamefully lenient sentencing of Sljivancanin," the Rijeka-based Novi List said.

A Serbian war crimes court is separately conducting a trial of more than a dozen people accused of taking part in the Ovcara massacre. The court convicted 14 people for the killings in 2007, but the trial was nullified by a higher court and was restarted. (dpa)