EXTRADITION TO SERBIA IS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED

Dr. Ganic: “I am not happy with the decision of the British Government, especially the Home Office, to initiate this process. It appears the British Government volunteers to do the police job for the Milosevic regime which is still more or less in some way very active.”

Lawyers for the former Bosnian president Ejup Ganic, 64, who is fighting extradition from Britain to Serbia over war crimes allegations, say that the request is politically motivated.

The case at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court was adjourned yesterday for a management hearing on April 20.

Outside court afterwards, Dr Ganic said: “Maybe it’s time to remind you that I spent almost four years in the surrounded Sarajevo, the city that was under a siege never recorded in history before. Genocide happened in Bosnia. The Serbs committed a genocide.

“Imagine those people who were fighting for London when the Germans were bombing London, imagine Nazis now prosecuting those British who were trying to defend Great Britain against Nazi Germany.

“I am not happy with the decision of the British Government, especially the Home Office, to initiate this process. It appears the British Government volunteers to do the police job for the Milosevic regime which is still more or less in some way very active.”

He continued: “We didn’t have good luck with this country at the beginning of the repression.

“They didn’t stop the genocide. They haven’t been as hard on Serbs as they should be.

“And now they are at the right arm of the Serbs to try to rewrite history, saying that everybody was killing everybody.

“I was in Sarajevo. That was not the case.”

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “This is a legal process. A full extradition request was received from Serbia and the Secretary of State certified that the request was valid under the Extradition Act 2003.

“The case is before the courts and it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

The grounds for refusing a valid extradition request are extremely limited.

Dr Ganic, a friend of Baroness Thatcher, was arrested after visiting the UK for a degree ceremony at the University of Buckingham.

The university is partnered with the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, where he is president.

Last year a Belgrade court indicted Dr Ganic and 18 others over their alleged roles when 42 soldiers were killed at the start of the Bosnian war in May 1992.

Dr Ganic, a senior minister, had assumed the role of acting president after then Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic was taken hostage by Serb forces at Sarajevo airport.

He is accused of “personally ordering” an attack on a convoy of Yugoslav soldiers, who were accompanied by United Nations peacekeepers, as they retreated from a Bosnian Muslim area of the city.

Serbia says this violated a safe passage pact.

The hearing, also attended by Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic, heard Dr Ganic is accused by Serbia of “grave breaches” of the Geneva Convention and “conspiracy to murder”.

Ben Watson, on behalf of the Serbian government, said he was accused of “war crimes against the wounded and sick”, “unlawful killing and wounding of the enemy” and “use of forbidden means of combat”.

He said it is alleged that on May 2-3 Dr Ganic “personally ordered” attacks on a military hospital, an officers’ club, a column of medical vehicles and a column of Yugoslav Army vehicles.

And he said the extradition request details allegations of the torture and killing of troops and wounded soldiers.

John Jones, for the defence, told the court that the extradition request was “manifestly ill-founded” and “politically motivated”.

He said Serbia was “using the extradition process to wage war by other means”, adding: “We say they know it is completely illegal.”

He said: “We want a hearing on abuse as expeditiously as possible.

“Dr Ganic has already suffered a terrible ordeal emotionally and physically.

“He is a distinguished statesman and scholar. Needless to say he denies all these allegations.”

Speaking outside court Dr Ganic said that he had already been investigated over the allegations.

He said: “Of course, Serbs tried to accuse me and I went to the Hague. I have been investigated from the bottom up and the top down. Nothing was found. I did everything correctly.

“There is also a tribunal of war crimes in Bosnia run by international judges and they did the same job so over and over I am an innocent man.” Timesonlin