The first step in the war crimes' trial against Mr Slobodan Milosevic will take place on Tuesday, when he is asked to enter his plea with the three judge tribunal in The Hague.
There are expected to be months of pre-trial arguments as the prosecution considers the evidence against Mr Milosevic. The trial is not expected to start until next year and will probably last for at least two years.
The handing over of Mr Milosevic to the tribunal on Thursday night, the chief prosecutor, Mrs Carla del Ponte, said, "does not represent the end of the process. " On the contrary, this is only the beginning of the criminal proceedings and a great deal of work now has to be done to bring the case to a just conclusion," she said.
Mr Graham Blewitt, the deputy chief prosecutor, said yesterday he was sure Mr Milosevic would be convicted. Asked what chance the former Yugoslav president had of walking free, he replied: "None." Much of the case against Mr Milosevic will focus on whether he failed to take "necessary and reasonable steps" to prevent or punish war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In May 1999, the tribunal indicted Mr Milosevic and four of his senior advisers for deporting 740,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and murdering 340 Albanians. Mr Blewitt yesterday described the case as "one of the most complicated and difficult trials in the history of criminal justice".
The prosecutors' task will be further complicated by the decision, announced yesterday, to extend the initial indictment against Mr Milosevic to include responsibility for further atrocities. They will almost certainly be broadened to include war crimes during the civil war in Bosnia.
The tribunal was established in 1993 and is the first international body for the prosecution of war crimes since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials in the aftermath of the second World War. A UN resolution stipulates that all states must co-operate with the tribunal.
However, Mr Milosevic's lawyers are likely to challenge the tribunal's jurisdiction. They are almost certain to point to the ruling by Yugoslavia's federal constitutional court against his extradition to the Hague.