Serb general handed over to war crimes court
A top Serb wanted in connection with alleged atrocities in Kosovo was being handed over to the UN war crimes court today.
General Sreten Lukic, the former Serb police chief in Kosovo, was indicted in 2003 for alleged war crimes committed by Serb troops during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.
The Radical party, the biggest group in the Serbian parliament, claimed Lukic “was kidnapped to The Hague by two bandits under the instruction of the government”.
But a spokesman for Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia said that Lukic’s departure was a “form of voluntary surrender”.
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians claimed 10,000 lives and displaced about one million people.
“General Sreten Lukic left for The Hague today,” the Serb government said in Belgrade.
A Serb news agency said Lukic was taken into custody at a Belgrade clinic where he had vascular surgery last week and taken to the airport for an immediate flight to the Netherlands.
Over the weekend, Lukic complained that he was being rushed to surrender to The Hague tribunal.
Lukic, who also had heart surgery last year, said he wanted to recuperate before giving himself up.
His arrest would be the first forceful handover of a Serb war crimes suspect by the conservative government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
Kostunica has been reluctant to arrest the fugitives fearing a political backlash by the nationalists who fiercely oppose the UN court. Serbia faces intense international pressure to hand over all the suspects, including former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic.
The European Union has warned Serbia that prospects to one day start membership talks with the bloc hinge on the extradition of about a dozen key suspects.
