A former Bosnian Serb general facing genocide charges before the UN war crimes tribunal was transferred Friday to the Hague-based court a day after his arrest, Nato said.
Zdravko Tolimir departed Sarajevo airport on board a Nato plane, said Derek Chappell, the spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.
"He has left Bosnia. It is a Nato operation to ensure that Tolimir is delivered to The Hague," Chappell told AFP without providing any more details. Tolimir was caught in the eastern Bosnian town of Bratunac on Thursday after he had crossed the border from Serbia, said Bosnian Serb police official Gojko Vasic. He was then handed over to authorities of the UN court.
The 58-year-old, also indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, had serious health problems, Vasic added without elaborating. Before his departure to the Netherlands, doctors were to examine Tolimir and evaluate his health condition. Since his arrest in a joint action mounted by Bosnian Serb and Serbian police, some local media outlets have reported that he is suffering from cancer.
Tolimir was in a "such a serious health condition that he could not travel" to the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday, said police official Dragi Milosevic. In a sealed indictment revealed in early 2005, Tolimir was charged by the ICTY for the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys - the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.