SERBIA: Former war crimes suspect Miroslav Radic returns to Belgrade after four years in prison

Record ID: 800030

  • Title: SERBIA: Former war crimes suspect Miroslav Radic returns to Belgrade after four years in prison
  • Date: 29th September 2007
  • Summary: AND HIS LAWYER BORIVOJE BOROVIC WALKING UP TO MEDIA VARIOUS OF RADIC WITH HIS FRIENDS AND RELATIVES
  • Embargoed: 14th October 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Serbia
  • Country: Serbia
  • Reuters ID: LVACXEUZYSMO4RMRDW72KRL158V8
  • Story Text: Former army officer accused of war crimes, Miroslav Radic arrives in Belgrade after five years in a war crimes tribunal prison. Radic is the first Serb accused of war crimes to be found innocent by the Hague tribunal.
    Former army officer and suspected war criminal Miroslav Radic returned to Belgrade on Friday (September 28) after being held for five years in a war crimes tribunal prison.
    On Thursday, the U.N. war crimes tribunal sentenced former Yugoslav army officer Mile Mrksic to 20 years in prison for effectively enabling the massacre of 194 people in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991.
    Judges sentenced a second ex-officer, Veselin Sljivancanin, to five years for torture but cleared him of the most serious charges.
    Radic, 45, the third of the group known as the "Vukovar Three," was found to have had nothing to do with the cruel treatment of the hospital evacuees and ultimately their murder.
    After Vukovar fell to Yugoslav forces after a three-month siege, people sheltering in the hospital hoped to be evacuated in the presence of international observers.
    Instead several hundred were selected by Serb forces, then taken to a farm where they were brutally beaten and shot dead, their bodies dumped into a mass grave.
    Radic arrived in Belgrade late Thursday with his lawyer Borivoje Borovic. He was welcomed relatives and friends. Borovic told reporters at Belgrade airport that the Croatian secret service was preparing false witnesses to testify about the killings in Vukovar.
    Miroslav Radic voluntarily surrendered on 15 May 2002 and was transferred the same day to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
    Radic said on Thursday he was pleased to be found innocent of the charges, "I hope I am not the last Serb to be freed by The Hague," he added.
    Radic commanded a special infantry unit of the first battailon of the Elite Motorised Guards Brigade. In this capacity, he was alleged to have taken part in the attack on Vukovar.
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