 A senior Bosnian Serb general indicted for genocide in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica will surrender this week at the U.N. war crimes tribunal, the Serbian government said Sunday. Vinko Pandurevic, a top fugitive since the end of the 1992-95 war in neighboring Bosnia, was to travel to the Netherlands on Wednesday to give himself up to the U.N. court at The Hague, the government said in a statement. He will be the 10th Serb war crimes suspect to give himself up to the tribunal since October. Belgrade has been under intense international pressure to extradite about a dozen suspects still at large before the European Union issues a report in April, on whether the Balkan country could one day begin membership negotiations. Pandurevic, who commanded the Bosnian Serb army's so-called Zvornik Brigade, was ``persuaded to surrender voluntarily during talks with Serbian Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic,'' the Serb government statement said. The Serbian government quoted Pandurevic as saying his decision to surrender was a result of a ``desire to help his nation,'' and that it was in the ``best interest of the state'' for him to go.
| He must have a heart condition or something; he'll get better care at The Hague's country club prison while waiting the next ten years for Carla del Ponte to prosecute him. |
Under wartime military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb troops, including Pandurevic's brigade, stormed the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, then a U.N.-protected area, in July 1995. The onslaught was followed by summary executions of Muslim men and boys in what became Europe's worst carnage since World War II. Later Sunday, in footage aired on private BK Television in Belgrade, Pandurevic said he felt morally responsible for the Srebrenica atrocities taking place, but that he neither knew of the crimes nor was in a position to prevent them. `Truth will prevail,'' Pandurevic said, adding that he was innocent of the charges. |