Fugitive no more
July 22, 2011
Former Croatian Serb rebel leader Goran Hadzic was handed over to the UN's International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague on Friday.
Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic earlier on Friday signed an official order authorising Hadzic's transfer to the tribunal. Before leaving for the Netherlands, the war crimes suspect was allowed to visit with his sick mother.
He faces 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the 1991-95 Croatian war, including the deportation of tens of thousands of Croats by troops under his command and the massacre of nearly 300 Croat prisoners at Vukovar in 1991.
It took Serbia seven years to find Hadzic, 52, but only two days since his arrest to extradite him to ICTY to face war crimes charges. Hadzic was arrested on Wednesday in the mountain region of Fruska Gora near the northern city of Novi Sad.
He is the last war crimes suspect that the ICTY sought from Serbia and the last fugitive among the 161 people indicted by the court, which the UN established in 1993 to prosecute major crimes in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
Author: Dagmar Breitenbach (AFP, dpa)
Editor: Susan Houlton