The Hague: A former Bosnian Serb paramilitary charged with the rape and torture of Muslim women during the 1992-95 Bosnian war surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal yesterday to face trial.
Gojko Jankovic, indicted by the court in The Hague for crimes against humanity and violation of the laws or customs of war, flew to the Netherlands from Bosnia's Serb Republic, the second Bosnian Serb to do so from there in the last two months.
Mr Jankovic, who surrendered to authorities, departed amid heavy police security and was accompanied by the region's interior minister, Darko Matijasevic.
The indictment says Mr Jankovic was a paramilitary leader in the eastern Bosnian town of Foca and a sub-commander of military police. It says he was responsible for the sexual assault of Muslim women by his subordinates and personally involved in the interrogation and rape of women.
The Serb Republic, which still has to make the first arrest of a suspect wanted by The Hague, hopes it can improve its image by encouraging fugitives to give themselves up on their own. The policy has been used in neighbouring Serbia in recent months.
Mr Jankovic is the sixth Serb or Bosnian Serb suspect to surrender to The Hague in two months, along with a Bosnian Muslim general and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian former prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj.
Mr Haradinaj appeared at the court yesterday where he pleaded not guilty to charges of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war in Kosovo in 1998. Dozens of Bosnian Serbs have been indicted for war crimes.
Most were arrested by Nato peacekeepers. Some have surrendered from Serbia or to Nato troops. Mr Jankovic is the third to do so via the Serb Republic's authorities. More than a dozen publicly indicted Serbs remain at large.
Top of the list of fugitives are Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, believed to be moving between eastern Bosnia and neighbouring Montenegro, and his wartime military commander, Ratko Mladic, widely reported to be in Serbia.
The issue of arrests and transfers is preventing the launch of Bosnia's talks on the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU and is keeping the country on the doorstep of Nato's Partnership for Peace co-operation programme for ex-communist countries.