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BELGRADE: The last fugitive sought by the UN Balkan war crimes tribunal was arrested by Serbian authorities Wednesday, answering intense international demands for his capture and boosting the country's hopes of becoming a candidate for European Union membership.
Former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic was taken into custody as he met a man delivering him money in a forest in a mountainous region of northern Serbia where many of his relatives live, authorities said. He had dramatically changed his appearance and was armed but did not resist, they said.
Hours later, Hadzic was brought in for questioning at the war crimes court in the capital Belgrade, a key step toward his extradition to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. His lawyer said Hadzic will not appeal the process, paving the way for a quick extradition, possibly within the next few days.
State TV footage showed Hadzic entering the courtroom escorted by guards. He walked slowly, slightly hunched, wearing a gray shirt, short hair and a mustache. His black beard had been shaved.
An unknown figure before the 1991-1995 ethnic war for control of Croatia, Hadzic suddenly rose to prominence through his links to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's secret police.
Put in charge of the self-styled Serb ministate in eastern Croatia, he was seen as a pawn of criminal gangs that collaborated heavily with the secret police and made huge profits from smuggled cars, gasoline and cigarettes.
The Hague tribunal indicted him in 2004 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the murder, torture, deportation and forcible transfer of Croats and other non-Serbs from the territories he controlled.
Less than two months after the capture of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, Serbia's Western-leaning president announced live on national television that ''Serbia has concluded its most difficult chapter in the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.''
''It was our moral duty,'' President Boris Tadic said. ''We have done this for the sake of citizens of Serbia, we have done this for the sake of the victims amongst other nations, we have done this for the sake of reconciliation, we have done this for the sake of establishing credibility of all societies, not only Serbian society.''
In his indictment Hadzic is accused of responsibility for the 1991 leveling of Vukovar, said to be the first European city entirely destroyed since World War II.
In one of the worst massacres in the Croatian conflict, Serb forces seized at least 264 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital after a three-month siege of the city, took them to a nearby pig farm, tortured, shot and buried them in an unmarked mass grave.
