(New York) - The arrest of Bosnian Serb Milomir Stakic and his transfer to The Hague is a welcome first step in the cooperation between the Federal Republic Yugoslavia and the U.N. war crimes tribunal, Human Rights Watch said today.
Serbian police arrested Stakic on Thursday, March 22, and transferred him to The Hague on Friday. Stakic was the mayor of Prijedor, in northwestern Bosnia and was allegedly involved in planning and organizing crimes that took place in the early 1990s at notorious detention camps near the town, including Omarska, where detainees were tortured and murdered.
"By surrendering Stakic, the authorities in Belgrade acknowledge the legitimacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia," said Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "But Yugoslavia has a long way to go before fully carrying out its obligation under international law to cooperate with the tribunal. A number of Yugoslav and Bosnian citizens who have been indicted by the tribunal in The Hague are still at large in Serbia and should be transferred to the custody of the tribunal."
Human Rights Watch said that cooperation with the tribunal must include the arrest and transfer of indictees such as Slobodan Milosevic and four others indicted for crimes against humanity in Kosovo in early 1999, as well as three Yugoslav Army officials indicted on charges relating to the capture of Vukovar in Croatia in November 1991, when at least 200 Croats were seized from a hospital and slaughtered.
