AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Two Bosnian Muslim army commanders were convicted of war crimes yesterday for failing to rein in foreign Muslim volunteers who murdered and tortured Bosnian Croats and Serbs in a 1990s “holy war.”

The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague sentenced a former Bosnian army chief of staff, Enver Hadzihasanovic, to five years in prison and his deputy, Amir Kubura, to 2 1/2 years.

It was the first time the Yugoslav tribunal dealt with the so-called mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who came mainly from North Africa and the Middle East to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-95 Bosnian war that killed an estimated 200,000 people.

Hundreds of volunteers, many of them veterans of the Afghanistan war against the Soviet Union that ended in 1989, enlisted in the Muslim cause in mid-1992 after Bosnia declared independence from the crumbling Yugoslav federation.

Yugoslavia was then headed by Slobodan Milosevic, who died in The Hague on Saturday in the custody of the same tribunal that tried the two Bosnians.

The two were among the highest-ranking Muslim officers brought to trial by the war crimes court, which has been criticized in Serbia for prosecuting far more Serbs than other ethnic groups. The tribunal was set up to prosecute high-ranking suspects of war crimes committed by all sides during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Mr. Hadzihasanovic, 55, and Mr. Kubura, 42, were acquitted of the most serious allegation – the massacre of non-Muslim Bosnians. Prosecutors had charged Hadzihasanovic with the responsibility for some 200 deaths and asked for a prison term of 20 years.

They recommended a 10-year sentence for Mr. Kubura.

The court found that the Bosnian army had little control over the mujahedeen until they were absorbed as an army unit known as El-Mujahed in August 1993.

In incidents before that date, the two officers were largely absolved of responsibility for the mujahedeen’s actions, even though the foreigners recruited many Bosnian Muslims who imitated their dress and fighting tactics.

Mr. Hadzihasanovic was convicted of failing to punish army soldiers who beat prisoners at the Zenica music school, where more than 100 civilians were held. The judgment said prisoners were smashed with wooden shovel handles as they ran a gauntlet of soldiers.

One man was ordered to beat his mentally handicapped son, then was beaten himself when he refused, the judgment said.

Mr. Kubura was convicted for failing to act against soldiers who plundered and rampaged through Bosnian Croat villages in the summer of 1993.