NewsBreakingOnline

Leader of 1990s Serbian insurgency in Croatia makes no move to appeal or delay transfer after seven years on the run The Serbian authorities moved swiftly today to rid themselves of their last international war crimes suspect and fugitive, extraditing the 1990s warlord Goran Hadzic for trial at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague only 48 hours after he was arrested. The extradition was hastened by the fact that Hadzic, a leader of the armed Serbian insurgency in Croatia in the early 1990s, did not appeal or seek to delay the transfer after seven years on the run ended with his capture in the hills north of Belgrade on Wednesday. The capture crowned 18 years of operations for the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, with Hadzic the last of 161 wanted for trial . Wednesday’s arrest, two months after Belgrade captured genocide suspect General Ratko Mladic and dispatched him for trial in The Hague, also marked a turning point for Serbia in seeking to turn from a pariah past to a future in line with the European mainstream. Hadzic, a former warehouse worker from Slavonia, a region in east Croatia, was a political leader of the Serbian rebellion in 1991, armed and sponsored by Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Belgrade. He led ethnic pogroms and armed insurrection against Zagreb, after Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia in June 1991, resulting in partition of the country and the Serbian seizure of a quarter of the territory during the war. Hadzic was president of the self-styled breakaway Serbian republic in Croatia for almost two years in 1992-93. He was indicted seven years ago and faces 14 counts of crimes against humanity and violating the laws of war for “persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; extermination; murder; imprisonment; torture; inhumane acts; deportation; inhumane acts (forcible transfers)”, according to the charge sheet. A puppet of the Milosevic regime, Hadzic was a local leader of the campaign to expel Croats from a third of Croatia and annex the territory to a “Greater Serbia” also including half of Bosnia. The campaign ended in disaster. Helped by the then Serbian government, Hadzic went into hiding when indicted by the tribunal in 2004. Detectives from The Hague tracked him to his house in Novi Sad, north of Belgrade, but the authorities failed to seize him. He was arrested in northern Serbia, where he was rumoured to enjoy the shelter of an Orthodox monastery. Serbia’s secret services, according to media reports in Belgrade, had been tracking Hadzic for several months and he was arrested after trying to raise money by selling a painting, said to be a Modigliani. Serbia Croatia Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk