A former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic who is facing trial on war crimes and genocide charges, will be extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague on Monday or Tuesday, French TF1 TV channel cited a tribunal’s judge, Mehmet Guney as saying.
“Mladic may be sent [to the Hague] on Monday or Tuesday. In accordance with the international law, he will be presented to the judge immediately,” Guney said, adding that the trial would take up to two years.
On May 24, Serbian authorities announced that Mladic had been arrested in Serbia after more than a decade on the run from war crimes charges.
Mladic, 69, is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for playing a key role in ethnic cleansing during Bosnian war in 1992-95, including the murder of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995.
Shortly after his arrest, police in Belgrade have detained at least 35 people during clashes between Mladic supporters and his opponents.
The nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) has scheduled a mass demonstration in Belgrade in support of Mladic. The rally under the slogan “Stop betrayal!” will take place in front of the country’s parliament building in the center of Serbian capital at 07:00 p.m. local time (17:00 GMT).
The party, the second largest in the Serbian legislature, promised to take thousands to the streets to protest against what it described as a “blow to the Serbian national interests.”
Mladic himself warned his supporters against bloodshed, saying he did not want to be the cause of unrest
MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti)