Serbia sought to turn the page on its troubled past as it prepared Thursday to hand over former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive of a UN court in The Hague.
Hadzic’s lawyer said it was “realistic” to expect that his client would be on a plane to The Hague by Friday afternoon after he refused his right to appeal a Serbian court’s decision to transfer him.
Hadzic will spend his last two days in Serbia meeting with his family, the lawyer, Toma Fila, added.
Hadzic’s wife, son and sister visited him earlier on Thursday in a detention cell situated in the court building in Belgrade. They refused to talk to reporters after the two-hour visit. Serbia’s deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said the necessary documentation for his transfer had been sent to Justice Minister Snezana Malovic, who will sign the final order.
But Vekaric said the exact moment of the transfer would not be made public in advance, citing security reasons.
With the arrest of Hadzic Wednesday after seven years on the run, Serbia has finally fulfilled its obligation to hand over all suspects wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Full cooperation with the court was a key demand of the European Union as Belgrade hopes to get candidacy status and a date to start accession talks later this year.
