Croatian Serb wartime leader Goran Hadzic declined to enter a plea to war crimes charges over the 1991-95 Croatian conflict in his first appearance at the UN's Yugoslavia tribunal on Monday.

Tweet

As court rules allow him 30 days to enter a plea, another initial appearance is scheduled for next month.

Hadzic, 52, was arrested in Serbia last week and transferred to The Hague on Friday. He is the last of Serbia's major war crimes suspects sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since the arrest in May of wartime Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic.

The tribunal's prosecution has charged the one-time leader of the self-proclaimed Serb Republic of Krajina during the early 1990s with 14 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes including the extermination, murder and willful killing of hundreds of Croat and non-Serb civilians.

Most notably, he is wanted for his role in the massacre by Croatian Serb troops of around 260 Croats and other non-Serbs taken from a hospital in Vukovar after it fell to Serb forces in November 1991 following a three-month siege.

Hadzic, a former warehouse employee, is also charged with persecution including the deportation or forcible transfer of tens of thousands of Croat and other non-Serb civilians, including 20,000 inhabitants of Vukovar.

Factfile
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, before which wartime Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic is due to appear for the first time on Monday as its last indicted fugitive, has concluded proceedings against 126 others accused of the most serious crimes committed during the 1990s Balkans wars.

Some statistics on the UN war crimes court:

• 161 people have been indicted by the ICTY since its creation in 1993. Goran Hadzic's arrest in Serbia last Wednesday concluded the tribunal's search for those suspected of war crimes during the Balkan wars.
• The tribunal has sentenced 64 people.
• The court has acquitted 13 people and referred 13 to national courts for trial.
• Sixteen accused died before a verdict was reached, including former Serbia's former president Slobodan Milosevic, who died on March 11, 2006, in his cell in The Hague's detention unit.
• Fourteen accused are currently on trial, including Bosnian Serb wartime political chief Radovan Karadzic. Since his trial opened in October 2009, 87 witnesses for the prosecution have given testimony.
• The trial of former Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir, accused of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre, started in February 2010.
• The trial of his superior and chief of the Bosnian Serb army, Ratko Mladic, is not expected to get under way for several months following his arrest in Serbia on May 26 after 16 years on the run.
• Four people have been sentenced to life in prison: Former Bosnian Serb general Stanislav Galic, who commanded the siege of Sarajevo, received a life sentence on appeal after having first been sentenced to jail for 20 years.
• Three others, Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader Milan Lukic, former Bosnian Serb army lieutenant-colonel Vujadin Popovic and former colonel Ljubisa Beara were appealing their sentences.
• Sixteen are awaiting the outcome of appeals.

Source: AFP