Bosnia to hand war crimes suspect to ICTY

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s war crimes court said on
Friday it would deliver Serb war crimes suspect Dragan
Zelenovic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague after he
was handed over to Sarajevo by Russia.

Russia transferred Zelenovic, wanted for rape and torture
during the Balkan country’s war, to Bosnia on Thursday after
tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte accused Moscow of
dragging its feet on the case.

“Dragan Zelenovic will be delivered to The Hague
immediately,” Judge Marie Tuma said during Zelenovic’s first
appearance before the Bosnian war crimes court.

The court’s international prosecutor, Philp Alcock, said
the tribunal had agreed the details of his handover with NATO
troops in Bosnia. He said it could happen within 36 hours.

Zelenovic, a former policeman, is wanted by the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for
atrocities committed against non-Serbs in the eastern Foca
region during the 1992-95 war.

He was arrested last August in the Khanti-Mansiisk
autonomous district of western Siberia where Russian media said
he had been working on construction sites under an assumed
name.

Del Ponte told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday: “The
long and unexplained delays in the transfer of Zelenovic … do
not allow for optimism in the future of the ICTY’s co-operation
with the Russian Federation.”

Interfax news agency reported Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov as saying that Zelenovic’s extradition would
allow Russia to avoid awkward questions about its commitment to
international justice when it hosts heads of state from the
Group of Eight rich democracies for a summit next month.

Bosnia’s war crimes chamber was established in 2005 to
alleviate some of the workload of the Hague tribunal. It will
increasingly take over low- and mid-level cases as the Hague
court winds down by 2010.

(Additional reporting by Maja Zuvela in Sarajevo and
Christian Lowe in Moscow)