June 20, 2008 Serbian court, government approve extradition of war crimes suspect

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) - The government of Serbia on Friday approved the extradition of a Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect to the U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands.

Ivana Ramic, a spokesman for Serbia's war crimes court, said a court in Belgrade rejected former Bosnian Serb police chief Stojan Zupljanin's final appeal. Hours later, a brief statement said the Cabinet had also approved Zupljanin's extradition to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

The government's decision cleared the final hurdle for Zupljanin's transfer.

The U.N. tribunal has indicted Zupljanin for allegedly overseeing Serb-run prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

He was arrested in the Serbian town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run. Under Serbian law, an extradition to the Hague court takes about a week.

Three other war crimes suspects remain at large. They are former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, his military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, and Goran Hadzic, a Croatian Serb leader.

Karadzic and Mladic are wanted on genocide charges for allegedly organizing the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 and other atrocities of the Bosnian war.

Serbia must arrest all the fugitives if it wants to move closer to European Union membership.