The UN war crimes tribunal has acquitted a Bosnian Serb of genocide charges.

It ruled that the crimes Goran Jelisic had committed did not constitute an organised campaign of atrocities and did not fall within the strict definition of genocide.

Jelisic - who allegedly called himself "Adolf" in a reference to Hitler - already faced the maximum punishment of life imprisonment for each of the atrocities he admitted carrying out.

He would have been given an additional life term if convicted of genocide.

For a genocide conviction, the judges would have had to have been convinced that his killings were part of a campaign intended to wipe out an entire ethnic group in the area.

In pressing for the conviction, prosecutors had hoped to reveal an organised campaign aimed at wiping out the local Muslim population and a trail of evidence linking Jelisic to more senior Serb officials.

It would have been the first genocide verdict registered by the court.

Jelisic confessed to charges relating to the torture and murder of at least 12 Croats and Muslims at the infamous Luka prison camp near Brcko in northern Bosnia in 1992.

During the trial in The Hague, one witness testified that Jelisic had often bragged about killing 20 to 30 Muslims a day.

The 31-year-old former mechanic pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity, and has admitted killing 12 people.

He denied the charge of genocide - the most serious charge under the International War Crimes Tribunal.

Hundreds of Bosnian Muslims and Croats were detained at the camp in what are reported to have been appalling conditions after being forced from their homes.

The bodies of Jelisic's victims were thrown into the nearby Sava river.

Jelisic was arrested in January 1998 by members of the Nato-led S-For peacekeeping force in the town of Bijeljina, part of Bosnian Serb territory in northeast Bosnia.

He is the second Bosnian Serb to stand trial for genocide before the Hague tribunal.

The first - a doctor called Milan Kovacevic - died shortly after his trial began