A former member of Bosnia’s wartime presidency, Ejup Ganic, was arrested in London on an extradition warrant from Serbia for alleged war crimes during the 1990s Balkans conflict, police said.
Officers from Scotland Yard’s Extradition Unit detained the 63-year-old at London’s Heathrow airport on Monday over the killing of injured soldiers in 1992, Scotland Yard said.
Ganic “was arrested on behalf of the Serbian authorities under a provisional extradition warrant alleging ‘conspiracy to murder with other named people and breach of the Geneva Convention, namely killing wounded soldiers...,’” it said.
A Foreign Office spokesman confirmed Ganic’s arrest following “a provisional extradition request from the Republic of Serbia in respect of conspiracy to murder and breach of the Geneva Convention,” which deals with war crimes.
Ganic — a Muslim member of Bosnia’s presidency during the 1992-1995 war — appeared at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court after his arrest, the spokesman said. He was remanded in custody following the hearing and appears in court again on March 29, police said.
“The Serbian authorities must now provide full papers to support their extradition request before a date can be fixed for an extradition hearing. A judge will then consider whether there are any bars to the extradition,” the Foreign Office spokesman said.
Ganic had already been detained on Friday after arriving in London but was released almost immediately as no extradition request had been received, Britain’s Press Association news agency reported, citing sources.
Belgrade wants to try Ganic and 18 other former Bosnian officials suspected of involvement in an attack on a Yugoslav army convoy in Sarajevo, as well as alleged incidents at a hospital and military barracks in the Bosnian capital.
At the time Ganic, the highest-ranking ex-Bosnian official named in the warrant, dismissed the allegations as “ridiculous.”
Eighteen people were killed and many officers, soldiers and civilians wounded in the May 1992 convoy attack.
Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives. It left the country split into two semi-autonomous halves.
Ganic’s arrest came as Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic told his genocide trial that the conflict launched in Bosnia had been a “holy” cause against Muslim aggression.
Ending his boycott of the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Karadzic said he would use the trial “to defend the greatness” of his people who had endured centuries of persecution.
The 64-year-old stands charged as the “supreme commander” of an ethnic cleansing campaign targeting Croats and Muslims.
In Belgrade, Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic told the Beta news agency that her ministry would send an extradition request for Ganic yesterday.
The Serbian interior ministry issued a warrant for Ganic and the other suspects last year because of the “armed attack on a Yugoslav army convoy in Sarajevo in May 1992.”
Serbian sources said 41 Yugoslav army soldiers and officers were killed, 71 were wounded and 215 detained in the attack.
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