SERBIA arrested one of the top four fugitives wanted by the United Nations tribunal for war crimes in the Balkans yesterday. It pledged to send the wartime Bosnian Serb security chief, Stojan Zupljanin, for trial at The Hague.
The move was seen as a breakthrough raising fresh hopes that the most infamous suspects, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic, could follow him to The Hague.
"This is important because the Serbs have been han
ging on to these people," said Christopher Stephen, author of Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic, and a correspondent for The Scotsman.
The arrest of remaining war crimes suspects is a major condition for Serbia to pursue membership of the European Union. "This shows they are trying to play ball," he said.
Zupljanin, 56, was a commander in the city of Banja Luka, the biggest town in the Bosnian Serb Republic and a centre of ethnic cleansing during the 1992-95 Bosnia war. He is charged with killing Muslim and Croat civilians.
His arrest was welcomed in Bosnia yesterday, and was seen as a step forward in Serbia's accession talks with the European Union.
But it comes as Serbia's leaders, deeply split between nationalists and a pro-EU block after inconclusive elections a month ago, are immersed in intense coalition negotiations.
"Stojan Zupljanin was arrested today near Belgrade … police and security agents took part in the operation. He should be extradited to The Hague in the next 72 hours," said Bruno Vekaric, a spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecutors.
Zupljanin was found at a flat about five miles from the centre of Belgrade.
Serbia has handed over 42 indicted suspects to the war crimes tribunal but Zupljanin's arrest is the first in months.
Few observers doubt that the whereabouts of Karadzic, Mladic, and a third leading war crimes suspect, Goran Hadzic, a local Croatian Serb leader, are well-known to Serb authorities, 13 years after the war ended.
A prosecution spokesman for the UN court said she hoped more arrests would follow. "We hope the others will also end in The Hague soon," Olga Kavran said yesterday.
"There was no resistance during his arrest," said Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia's chief war crimes prosecutor, who co- ordinated the operation.
"This arrest shows clearly that we are seriously co-operating (with The Hague) and there is the political will for full co-operation," he added.
Zupljanin foiled a previous attempt to arrest him in the southern city of Nis two months ago. "(He) has been accused of killings, torture, persecution, extermination and other horrid crimes against civilian population in western Bosnia, and his arrest represents a move in the right direction," said Haris Silajdzic, the Muslim member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency.
Serge Brammertz, the UN's chief prosecutor for Yugoslavia war crimes, told the UN Security Council last week he believed all four suspects were within Serbia's reach and urged the new government to arrest them.
Their arrest and handover has been a condition for Serbia's advancement towards membership of the EU.
Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, said: "To have the people who have been prosecuted, arrested and being placed in front of an international tribunal, having a fair trial, is something that is beneficial for everybody."
The lawyer who 'turned into a torturer'STOJAN Zupljanin graduated from being an ordinary police commander to one of the most infamous war-crimes suspects in the former Yugoslavia.
As Bosnian Serb police commander in the city of Banja Luka, a centre of brutal ethnic cleansing, he allegedly controlled Serb-run prison camps.
Images from the camps in northern Bosnia shocked world public opinion, when television footage of starving prisoners evoked memories of Nazi atrocities.
Zupljanin was initially charged with genocide in 1999, but that was later amended to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1951, he graduated in law from the University of Sarajevo, then joined the secretariat of internal affairs in Banja Luka.
In 1985, he became a police department head, then in 1991 took command of the Regional Security Services Centre of Banja Luka.
Zupljanin was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal with crimes against Muslims and Croats in a western area of Bosnia known as Bosanska Krajina early in the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He was indicted on 12 counts, including torture.
In 2007, Zupljanin's family said he should turn himself in.
