Global Policy Forum

By Katarina Karatovac

A former Yugoslav army captain, long sought by the U.N. war crimes court for a massacre in the 1991 Croatian war, surrendered to Serbian authorities, a government official said Monday. Capt. Miroslav Radic, accused along with two other former officers of ordering the massacre of more than 200 civilians and prisoners of war during Croatia's war for independence, surrendered in Belgrade, said Serbia's deputy prime minister, Cedomir Jovanovic.

"Radic's surrender is a defeat for those forces within Serbia who have opposed its transition to a democracy," Jovanovic said. Radic was part of an army unit commanded by Gen. Mile Mrksic that besieged the eastern Croatian city of Vukovar in 1991 and shelled it for months.

Radic is expected to be extradited to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, following a routine judicial procedure. Radic had been on the run ever since being indicted by the U.N. tribunal in late 1995.

"Radic gave himself up and, therefore, will be eligible to the same government guarantees as other indicted Serb suspects who surrendered of their own volition," Jovanovic said. Once Radic is transferred to the detention facility at The Hague, those guarantees may prompt the U.N. court to release him until his trial.

Mrksic surrendered last year and has pleaded innocent. The third man sought in the Vukovar massacre, Col. Veselin Sljivancanin, remains at large. The indictment against the three officers alleges that troops under their command removed at least 200 non-Serbs from the Vukovar hospital in November 1991 and transported them to a nearby pig farm, where most of them were shot and buried in a mass grave.

Croats consider Vukovar, located near Croatia's eastern border with Serbia and Montenegro — the successor to Yugoslavia, a symbol of Serb wartime cruelty. Serbia has been under Western pressure to ensure that all Serb war crimes suspects are brought to justice or it risks losing financial aid and other support.

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