Serbia may send former Bosnia Serb military leader Ratko Mladic to face genocide charges in The Hague within the next 24 hours, a justice official said today.
“It will happen within the next 24 hours, as soon as the appeal arrives to the court and that is expected today,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He declined to give more details of the extradition plans.
“The panel of three will swiftly decide on the appeal, they will almost certainly reject it, the justice minister will sign extradition papers and off he goes,” he said.
The International Criminal Tribunal indicted Mladic for genocide in the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnian War.
Serb security agents found the fugitive general last week after 16 years on the run.
Court officials and police allowed Mladic an hour-long visit to his daughter Ana’s grave in a graveyard on the outskirts of Belgrade, the official said. A motorcade of armoured jeeps brought Mladic back to his prison cell.
Ana Mladic committed suicide in 1994 and before he went underground in early 2000s the general was frequently seen visiting her grave.
Mladic’s lawyers say the 69-year-old, who was captured alone in a farmhouse, is mentally unstable and too sick to be extradited to the tribunal.
Mladic’s son and grandchildren, who live in Belgrade, visited him in prison yesterday.
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