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By Daria Sito-Sucic

SARAJEVO, July 18 (Reuters) - Bosnia's war crimes court on Wednesday acquitted Momcilo Mandic, the most senior ethnic Serb official indicted by Bosnian authorities, of all charges related to crimes during the 1992-95 war.

In a decision that surprised Mandic's lawyers, the court said there was no evidence the justice minister of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was responsible for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims at several detention camps.

Mandic was also cleared of charges of planning and leading an attack by Bosnian Serb police and paramilitary units on a Sarajevo police training centre. Non-Serbs were held in the attack and tortured.

"Mandic had an ambiguous role -- he held an important position but has had no executive role," said Davorin Jukic, chairman of the court council.

"There is no evidence that he was present at the sites nor that he was supervisor to those who committed the crimes."

Jukic said prosecutors had failed to provide evidence that Mandic was responsible or directly related to persecution, torture and killing of some 150 Bosnian Muslims in detention camps near Sarajevo and in the eastern town of Foca.

He said Mandic was acquitted of charges that he attacked the police training centre in Vraca and tried to beat a Muslim to death there. Jukic also said prosecutors were wrong to charge Mandic with violating the Geneva convention.

Mandic's lawyers welcomed the decision, saying they believed the court had been under political pressure to find him guilty. Last year Mandic was jailed for five years for abuse of office and fraud at a bank he used to manage.

"The court has confirmed...that we can have confidence in the independent judiciary," said lawyer Refik Serdarevic.

Mandic left Bosnia towards the end of the war and moved to Belgrade where he became a wealthy businessman. He was arrested in Montenegro in 2005 and transferred to Bosnia.

His wartime boss Karadzic is still on the run from the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted him twice for genocide.

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