Oct 27 (Reuters) - Sweden released former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, 79, on Tuesday, two-thirds into an 11-year jail term for war crimes, the government said. Here are some facts about Plavsic: * ON TRIAL: -- Plavsic pleaded guilty to persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds by "inviting paramilitaries from Serbia to assist Bosnian Serb forces in effecting ethnic separation by force". -- The Hague War Crimes tribunal sentenced her to 11 years in jail in late February 2003 for a crime against humanity. Plavsic was the most senior politician to be sentenced by the court. Charges of genocide, extermination and murder were dropped as part of a plea bargain. -- She was transferred to Stockholm from The Hague in June 2003. -- In April 2007, Sweden rejected a pardon request from Plavsic who made the request in January 2007 on the grounds of age, high blood pressure and a hip inflammation. * POLITICAL CAREER: -- Plavsic was dubbed the Iron Lady of Bosnia's Serb Republic for her opposition to the then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic whom she publicly snubbed when he introduced sanctions in 1994 to press Bosnian Serbs into making peace. -- One of Radovan Karadzic's two deputies during the war, Plavsic replaced him as the president of the Serb Republic entity when he bowed to Western pressure in 1996 and quit public life. -- The next year she bolted from the ultra-nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) founded by Karadzic, set up the Serb People's Alliance party and elicited Western support for her anti-corruption drive. -- She led the Western-backed Sloga coalition in a general election in 1998 in which she lost the presidency to ultra-nationalist Nikola Poplasen. -- Plavsic surrendered voluntarily to the International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia (ICTY) in January 2001. -- Plavsic gave an unprecedented "mea culpa" in 2002, changing her plea to guilty to one count of crimes against humanity in the Bosnian war. * LIFE DETAILS: -- Plavsic was born in July 1930 in the northeast town of Tuzla but spent her life until 1992 in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. As a member of the Bosnian Serb wartime leadership, she defended the siege of the city as a "defence of Serb homes". -- She earned a doctorate in biology in the Croatian capital Zagreb and won honours as a Fulbright scholar in the United States. At Sarajevo university, she taught mathematics and natural science. -- Plavsic was a member of Bosnia's collective presidency after the 1990 elections which put nationalist parties in power. Sources: Reuters/www.trial-ch.org
REUTERS PICTURES OF THE DECADE. A Rwandan worker cleans a mass grave outside the church in Nyanza, Rwanda April 4, 2004. An estimated 800,000 people were killed in 1994 in 100 ...
