Belgrade: Mladic will be extradited

BELGRADE, Serbia, May 31 (UPI) -- War crimes suspect Ratko Mladic will be extradited to The Hague on genocide charges despite his lawyer's appeal of the order, Serbian officials said.

Delaying tactics by the former Bosnian Serb general's defense lawyer will not put off the extradition beyond the end of the week, officials said.

Mladic lawyer Milos Saljic mailed an appeal of Mladic's extraction order Monday, arguing Mladic was physically and mentally unfit for trial before a special United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

"I believe the trial will not go ahead because I do not believe Mladic will see the start of that process in front of the Hague tribunal," Saljic told reporters in front of Belgrade's Special Court, where Mladic was imprisoned, with guards and doctors watching over him.

Bruno Vekaric, the deputy war crimes prosecutor in Serbia, said Saljic's appeal was a manipulative tactic because local doctors concluded Mladic, 69, was well enough to be transferred from Serbia for trial.

Lawyers acting for Mladic's co-accused, former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, attempted a similar ploy after he was arrested July 21, 2008. But the appeal was lost in the mail, Belgrade press reports said, and Karadzic was extradited five days later.

Mladic, captured last week after nearly 16 years on the run, was indicted in 1995 by the tribunal for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is accused of being responsible for the 1992-1995 Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre -- the largest mass murder in Europe since the Danube Swabians concentration camps of World War II.

Belgrade denied Mladic's arrest was tied to a secret deal with the West to ensure the country's eventual membership of the European Union.

"There was no trade with Mladic's extradition," said Rasim Ljajic, president of the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.

"We have arrested Mladic when we could, when we could reach him and when we were sure we were following the right trail," The Guardian quoted Ljajic as saying.