Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Ratko Mladic, who was arrested in Serbia last Thursday after evading arrest for 16 years, could be transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague over the next four days, a Serbian Justice Ministry official said on Monday.
The extradition process could last at least two and not more than four days, Justice Ministry state secretary Slobodan Homen said in an interview with B92 radio.
If the court does not receive by 1700 hours on Monday an appeal to the ruling that all the conditions for Mladic's extradition have been met, we will have to wait for another 24 hours to check whether the appeal has been sent at all, Homen said.
"Sending an appeal by post is just stalling, an attempt to buy another day. This is not the first time. The same happened with (Bosnian Serb wartime political leader) Radovan Karadzic, when his lawyer claimed that he had posted it and then it could not be found anywhere. It was speculated that it was lost, and in the end, which will probably happen in this case too, 24 hours after the expiry of the deadline for appeal, the judge found that it had not been filed at all," Homen said.
Speaking of Mladic's health, Homen said that Mladic had been examined by a team of doctors and that "everything else is marketing". He said that the Justice Ministry, which signs extradition orders, accepts decisions of the court.
An investigative judge of the War Crimes Chamber of the High Court in Belgrade concluded his hearing of Mladic last Friday, after which the court ruled that the conditions for the transfer of Mladic to The Hague had been met.
Mladic's defence announced it would appeal against the ruling on Monday. The appeal is to be decided by a three-member non-trial panel within three days of its receipt, and an extradition order will be signed by the Minister of Justice.
The chairman of the National Council for Cooperation with the ICTY, Rasim Ljajic, has said that a date and time of Mladic's extradition will not be disclosed for security reasons. Belgrade media speculate that Mladic might be in The Hague as early as Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office strongly denied a report, carried by some Croatian media, that War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic had told Reuters news agency that he was closing in on the sole remaining fugitive, Croatian Serb rebel leader Goran Hadzic, and that he would be captured soon.
