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Lawyer for Mladic to Challenge Extradition Decision

   VOA News  May 28, 2011

Photo: Reuters

   Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic in seen this handout photo
   taken in Belgrade, May 26, 2011

   A lawyer for Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic says he will
   appeal a court decision to extradite his client to The Hague for a
   trial before a U.N.-backed court.
   The attorney said Friday he will appeal the Belgrade court's decision
   on Monday. Mladic's son says the wartime general is too ill to travel.
   Mladic was arrested Thursday in northern Serbia after 16 years of
   hiding. In 1995, the U.N. tribunal on war crimes in the former
   Yugoslavia indicted him for atrocities he allegedly carried out, or
   ordered, during the three-year siege of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo,
   and for the killing of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys near the city
   of Srebrenica.
   Serbian officials say they will pursue and prosecute anyone who had
   helped Mladic avoid being captured over the years.
   The U.N. Security Council welcomed Mladic's arrest. In a Friday
   statement, the council also said it was reiterating a commitment to
   ensure that there was no impunity for those responsible for "genocide,
   war crimes or crimes against humanity."
   Meanwhile, a Serbian ultra-nationalist party is calling for its
   supporters on Sunday to protest Mladic's arrest.
   The Serb Radical Party is asking supporters to gather in front of the
   National Assembly in Belgrade. The group says Mladic's arrest amounts
   to "treason." About 2,000 people protested Friday in Mladic's former
   war-time stronghold, Pale.
   Some 15,000 people attended a similar protest in 2008 following the
   arrest of another Serbian wartime leader accused of war crimes, Radovan
   Karadzic.
   The capture of Mladic and one more fugitive still at large, Croatian
   Serb Goran Hadzic, have been key conditions in Belgrade's bid to become
   a candidate for European Union membership.

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