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Austria holds Bosnian general on Belgrade's war-crimes charge
Mar 3, 2011, 23:47 GMT
Sarajevo - Austrian police arrested Bosnian Muslim retired general Jovo Divjak on Thursday evening on a warrant from Serbia, the Sarajevo television TV1 said.
The arrest was made at the Vienna airport, TV1 reported, quoting Haris Hrle, Bosnian ambassador to Austria.
According to charges from Belgrade, Divjak was one of the commanding officers responsible for a 1992 attack on a former Yugoslav Army convoy in Sarajevo at the start of the Bosnian war.
Serbian authorities say that around 40 soldiers were killed in the ambush, but Bosnian Muslim officials contend that the death toll was lower.
The war-crimes charges against Divjak are the same as those that led to the arrest of the Bosnian former president Ejup Ganic a year ago in London.
Five months after Ganic's arrest, a British court turned down Belgrade's request for his extradition, judging it 'politically motivated.'
The 1992-95 Bosnian war pitted Serbs, backed by Belgrade, against Muslims and Croats. Hundreds of war-crimes trials were launched by all sides after the war, as well as after the wars in Croatia and Kosovo.
The highest-profile war-crimes trials have been held at the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, including prosecutions against the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and, currently, Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic.
The Hague-based tribunal raised no charges related to the May 1992 attack on the Yugoslav army convoy.
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