Mladic extradited to Hague as final appeal rejected

FORMER Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic was extradited to the Netherlands yesterday to face genocide charges at the UN war crimes tribunal after 16 years on the run.

The 69-year-old arrived in Rotterdam on a Serbian government jet last night. After 90 minutes at the airport, where he was kept out of sight, Mladic was transferred by helicopter to the tribunal’s detention centre near The Hague. Following standard procedure, he was kept in isolation last night. It was unclear when he would actually face the court.

Mladic was indicted by the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.