UPDATED ON:
Saturday, July 26, 2008
05:03 Mecca time, 02:03 GMT
 
News Europe
Karadzic appeal deadline expires
Karadzic had cultivated an image as a
doctor to evade arrest

The lawyer for Radovan Karadzic has refused to confirm whether the former Bosnian Serb leader has lodged an appeal against extradition to the war crimes court in The Hague, as the deadline to mount a legal challenge expired.

Karadzic had until midnight [2300 GMT on Friday] to lodge an appeal.

But Sveta Vujacic, his lawyer, said that he planned to post the appeal before post offices in Serbia closed, four hours before the deadline.

Karadzic faces 11 charges at the war crimes tribunal, including genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide.

He is alleged to have masterminded the murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. The massacre was Europe's worst since World War II.

A prosecutor interviewed Karadzic for more than an hour on Friday about the details of his arrest, Vujacic said.

'Delay tactic'

Should the Serb court receive an appeal, a panel of judges will meet to decide on it, Ivana Ramic, a Serbian court spokeswoman, said.

The case will then be turned over to the Serbian government, which issues the final extradition order, she said.

Vujacic had earlier told the Associated Press that he would not confirm filing the appeal, and could not be reached after post offices in Serbia closed.

But Serbia's state Tanjug news agency had quoted him as saying that a delaying the filing of Karadzic's appeal was part of a defence strategy.

Government officials say that Karadzic was captured on Monday, bringing an end to his 13-year status as a fugitive.

He had assumed a false identity under the name Dragan Dabic, wearing a long beard and posing as a doctor of alternative medicine.

Vujacic insists his client was captured last Friday on a public bus in a Belgrade suburb, before being hooded and transferred to an unknown location where he was kept for three days.

He has filed a lawsuit against Karadzic's alleged abductors, and said on Friday that Karadzic was asked about the claims by a prosecutor on Friday.

Nationalist anger

Karadzic plans to defend himself against the UN genocide charges, Vujacic has said, in the same manner that Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia’s president during the Bosnian war, did.

Protests against Karadzic's arrest by Serbian nationalists have continued for a third day in downtown Belgrade.

Demonstrators briefly scuffled with police at the Belgrade City Council building on Friday.

Vjerica Radeta, a senior official from the Serbian Radical Party, said that Boris Tadic, Serbia's prime minister, could face attacks by nationalists angry over Karadzic's arrest.

"We remind Tadic that treason has never been forgiven in Serbia … Every traitor in Serbian history has met with damnation," he said.

 Source: Agencies
 
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