More than a hundred Serbian police commandos stormed a Belgrade apartment early yesterday and arrested a top war-crimes suspect amid fierce clashes with his hardline nationalist supporters in the street below.
A senior Interior Ministry source confirmed that former Yugoslav National Army colonel Veselin Sljivancanin had been taken into custody, answering a US request to seize him so that Washington could approve further aid to Serbia.
The arrest of Sljivancanin, who had been a fugitive since former president Slobodan Milosevic was toppled in October 2000, climaxed a tense 10-hour standoff outside the flat where he had apparently returned to celebrate his 50th birthday.
Sljivancanin was indicted in 1995 by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for alleged complicity in the massacre of 200 Croat and other non-Serb civilians, after Yugoslav troops captured the Danube port of Vukovar in 1991.
Sljivancanin had threatened to blow himself up rather than hand himself over to international justice. His wife told local reporters he had in the end "surrendered voluntarily."
Several hundred diehard nationalists filled the street on Thursday afternoon when police entered the apartment block, throwing stones, setting fires and provoking violent clashes, the likes of which had not even been seen when Milosevic was himself arrested in an April 2001 drama.
Well over 100 riot police and camouflage-uniformed gendarmes fired tear gas and stun grenades at the hostile crowd before a commando squad began battering down the armored door of Sljivancanin's flat shortly before midnight.
Several police and demonstrators, who included soccer hooligans, were injured in the clashes which flared again briefly after he was driven off to a Belgrade jail.
Sljivancanin's two co-accused in the Vukovar massacre -- one of the most notorious war crimes of Croatia's 1991 to 1995 independence war -- are already in detention at The Hague awaiting trial.
His arrest came two days before the US government was to certify to Congress that Belgrade is cooperating with the tribunal on rounding up war-crimes suspects, a step essential for the release of further economic aid worth a total of US$110 million this year.
A senior US official warned last week that without Sljivancanin in custody, certification would be "a difficult decision," and urged Serbian authorities to find him.
Three Serbian men indicted by The Hague have been transferred to the tribunal in the past month.
The latest arrest leaves former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic and army commander Ratko Mladic as the two remaining top fugitives indicted for war crimes committed during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1999.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS