Frontline Blog

Friday 22 July 2011

Last Serbian War Crimes Fugitive Handed Over to Tribunal


20:45 |

The last fugitive wanted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal was handed over by Serbian authorities on Friday, ending a tense and drawn-out custody battle over Balkan war crimes suspects that started more than 16 years ago.

Goran Hadzic, 52, entered the high-security prison compound near The Hague in The Netherlands on Friday afternoon. He had been on the run for seven years, hiding in Serbia and other countries, including Russia, according to his lawyers.

“He used another name,” said Radoslav Marenkovic, one of the lawyers, “but he had regular Serbian identity papers.” The tribunal prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said he hoped that Serbia would explain how Mr. Hadzic had eluded justice for so long.

While calling the arrival of the last fugitive “a milestone” for the tribunal, Mr. Brammertz reminded Serbia that he still wanted access to more of its wartime archives and expected the government’s help in providing access to witnesses.

Before his flight to The Hague, Mr. Hadzic was allowed to visit his ailing mother in the town of Novi Sad and to stop briefly at the tomb of his father in a nearby town.

Mr. Hadzic is scheduled appear Monday in court, where will be read the charges he faces, including a long list of atrocities that took place in Croatia in the early 1990s when Serbs seized almost one-third of Croatian territory known as Krajina and drove out the non-Serb population, torturing and killing many. Mr. Hadzic’s indictment holds him accountable for much of the violence as the president of the short-lived Republic of Serbian Krajina, even though his orders, money and weapons came from the government of Serbia. Croatia took back the land in 1995.

New questions arose Friday over the actions surrounding Mr. Hadzic’s arrest. On Wednesday, a Serbian prosecutor said that Mr. Hadzic had been caught because, from his hiding place, he tried to sell a stolen painting by the Italian modernist Modigliani, but others have since contradicted this. Mr. Marenkovic, the lawyer, dismissed the prosecutors’ statement as “completely false,” saying that Mr. Hadzic “did not try to sell a Modigliani or any other painting.”

Fake and stolen artworks have circulated in recent years in Serbia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, according to experts. But Charles Hill, a retired Scotland Yard detective and an expert on recovering stolen art, said that stolen works found in Serbia had usually been fakes.

“There are some exceptions, but usually they are fakes.” Mr. Hill said. “That’s been my experience.”

 


You Might Also Like :


0 comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...