Austria considers it “unthinkable” to extradite a detained former Bosnian army general to Serbia over war crimes allegations, a minister said.
“According to our experts in international law, Jovan Divjak’s extradition to Serbia is unthinkable,” Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger told the Austrian newspaper Kurier in an interview published yesterday.
Divjak was arrested at Vienna airport on Thursday evening as he flew in from the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, en route to Bologna, Italy, where he was scheduled to meet with humanitarian workers.
He could be held for several weeks while Austria obtains and examines the documents backing Serbia’s extradition request, prosecution spokesman Friedrich Koehl said.
Divjak was a commanding officer during a 1992 attack in Sarajevo on a Yugoslav army convoy in which 18 soldiers were killed.
Born in Belgrade of Serb parents, he is a self-declared Bosnian who took the side of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian army against Bosnian Serb forces in 1991.
Since his retirement he has headed up an educational group that gives scholarships to war orphans irrespective of their ethnicity.
Hardline nationalist Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik on Friday hailed Divjak’s arrest, saying: “He participated in and commanded war crimes.”
For Serbs, the former general “is definitively responsible,” Dodik said.
Divjak, in a letter read by Bosnian Ambassador to Austria Haris Hrle on public television FTV, said he did not feel guilty about his alleged crime.
“I acted in a way to avoid a more serious tragedy. I assure you that truth and justice will triumph this time,” he said.
Several French and Franco-Bosnian organizations have called for Divjak’s release.
The general, who turns 74 on Friday, received France’s Legion of Honor in 2001, the country’s highest award, for “his civic sense, his refusal of prejudice and of ethnic discrimination.”
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