Former Croat Serb chief surrenders to UN Tribunal

A former Croatian Serb rebel leader today boarded a plane bound for the Netherlands to turn himself in to the UN war crimes tribunal.

Milan Martic took a commercial flight from Belgrade to Amsterdam before his planned surrender to the tribunal at The Hague.

Martic led rebel Serbs opposed to Croatia’s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

He was indicted by the tribunal in connection with the shelling of the Croatian capital Zagreb in May 1995, which killed several civilians and injured dozens.

‘‘I’m voluntarily travelling to The Hague to find out under whose will we (the Croatian Serbs) were chased out’’ from Croatia in 1995, Martic told dozens of Croatian Serb supporters at the airport. ‘‘If there is justice, I’ll be back soon.’’

In the first years of the Croatian Serb rebellion, Martic was close to Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president now being tried by the tribunal for alleged war crimes committed by Serb forces in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The two fell out after Milosevic - back then president of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic - turned his back on Croatian Serbs and allowed Croatian forces to retake the rebel-held territories in 1995 without a serious fight.

Martic then ordered the retaliatory missile attack on Zagreb.

The chief war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, recently said that the indictment against Martic would soon be expanded to include specific wartime actions by his troops in Croatia where thousands were killed and tens of thousands chased from their homes between 1991 and 1995.

Martic, who had been hiding in Bosnia and Serbia since 1995, is one of six Serb suspects offering to surrender voluntarily to the tribunal rather than face possible arrest and extradition.

He had spent his last days before giving himself up with family and friends in the remote central Serbian village of Petina, where he has been hiding under an alias.

‘‘I am going to The Hague to defend the truth and justice of the Krajina people,’’ Martic said recently, referring to a Croatian area previously populated mostly by Serbs.

24 Serbs are on the UN court’s list of suspects wanted for alleged war crimes committed during the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

Yugoslavia’s current leadership, which extradited Milosevic to The Hague last year, has been under strong Western pressure to hand them over or risk losing millions of dollars in badly needed US aid.

Last month, the parliament adopted a law enabling extradition of war crimes suspects to The Hague.

Since the new legislation, three suspects have turned themselves in to the UN court: former Yugoslav army chief General Dragoljub Ojdanic; former deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic; and a former warden of a Bosnian Serb prison camp, Momcilo Gruban.

Although the surrenders were welcomed as a sign that Belgrade would fully cooperate with the UN tribunal, international pressure continues on the authorities to start making arrests.

18 other suspects listed by the UN tribunal - including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime commander General Ratko Mladic, the two most wanted - have not offered to surrender. Yugoslav authorities claim the two are not in the country.