Zagreb: A Croatian court on Tuesday sentenced an Australian citizen and former Serbian paramilitary commander to 15 years in prison for torturing and killing soldiers and civilians during Croatia's 1991-95 independence war.

Dragan Vasiljkovic, 62, who has dual Serbian and Australian citizenship, was charged with violating the Geneva Convention by torturing and killing captive Croatian soldiers and police in the rebel stronghold of Knin and for crimes near the towns of Glina and Benkovac in 1991 and 1993.

He was found guilty after a year-long trial looking into his torturing of prisoners and an attack on a police precinct during an ethnic Serb uprising. 

The trial, which was held in the Adriatic city of Split, took one year to complete. Vasiljkovic denied he had committed any crimes insisting that the trial was "political" and can file an appeal.

Vasiljkovic was born in Serbia and moved to Australia aged 15.

He returned to the Balkans in the early 1990s amid the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Slovenia and Croatia split from Yugoslavia in 1991. Bosnia and Macedonia followed shortly thereafter, leaving Serbia and Montenegro behind.

After Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, its Serb minority, backed by Belgrade, seized a third of the country by force. 

Vasiljkovic took part in the Belgrade-backed uprising of Serbs in Croatia. The Serbs sought to split the territory they held from Croatia and join it with Serbia proper. 

Croatia retook its occupied territory in a 1995 offensive, a crushing defeat for the Serbs after four years.

Based in Knin, the capital of a self-proclaimed Serb republic, Vasiljkovic commanded a paramilitary unit fighting fledgling Croatian armed forces.

He later withdrew to Belgrade, before returning to Australia, where he was arrested in 2006 under a warrant from Croatia and was finally extradited in 2015 after years of legal battling.

At the time of his arrest Vasiljkovic worked as a golf instructor in Perth under the name Daniel Snedden.

Reuters, AAP