SARAJEVO, March 29 - RAPSI. A Bosnian court has sentenced former Bosnian Serb paramilitary commander Veselin Vlahovic to the maximum sentence of 45 years in prison for crimes against humanity, according to local media reports.

The trial chamber chaired by Judge Zoran Bozic found Vlahovic guilty on numerous counts of murder, rape, illegal deprivation of freedom, physical and mental abuse, looting, and kidnapping carried out in Sarajevo in 1992.

The crimes were committed against Bosnian Muslims and Croats in three Sarajevo districts - Grbavica, Kovacici and Vraca.

Vlahovic had pleaded not guilty.

Vlahovic, also known as Batko and the "Monster of Grbavica," is widely regarded to have been an extremely war criminal. In the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he served in the Bosnian-Serb military unit called the "White Angels."

During the trial, prosecutors called 112 witnesses.

Vlahovic was detained in Spain in 2010 during an operation against a criminal enterprise suspected of armed assaults and robberies, and was then transferred to the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is not his country of citizenship.

Vlahovic was born in the Montenegrin city of Niksic in 1969 and moved to Sarajevo in 1986. After the war, he lived in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica. In 1999, he was jailed for armed robbery, but he escaped from prison on June 18, 2011.

Bosnia and Herzegovina announced its secession from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992, after which a war broke out between Bosnia's Muslim, Serb, and Croat populations.

Experts estimate casualties in excess of 100,000 throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war ended in 1995.