June 22, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 17, 1429

BELGRADE, June 21: Serb authorities on Saturday turned over an ex-Bosnian Serb police chief to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

Stojan Zupljanin was arrested in the town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run. A Belgrade court on Friday rejected his appeal against extradition.

“Stojan Zupljanin was transferred today into the tribunal’s custody, after evading justice for more than eight years,” the court in The Hague confirmed. Details of the transfer routinely are not disclosed.

No immediate date was announced for his initial appearance before a judge, when he will be asked to enter a plea. Suspects normally are summoned to court within a few days of arriving at the UN detention centre outside The Hague.

Serbia has been under pressure from the European Union to turn over suspects to the international tribunal, which has charged Zupljanin with war crimes for allegedly overseeing Serb-run prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

The EU has stressed that all the suspects sought by the tribunal must be arrested and extradited if Belgrade wants to move closer to the 27-nation bloc.

Zupljanin is the 43rd Serb suspect extradited to the tribunal. The others include former president Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted in 2000 and died in 2006 while on trial on war crimes charges.—AP