Srebrenica massacre general surrenders

A senior Bosnian Serb general indicted in the 1995 massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague today.

Vinko Pandurevic was taken under heavy police security to Belgrade international airport and then to the Netherlands on a flight arranged by the Serbian government.

He was driven to the UN detention centre outside the Dutch capital.

Pandurevic has been indicted for genocide, violations of the laws or customs of war and crimes against humanity.

During Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, Pandurevic commanded the Bosnian Serb army’s so-called Zvornik Brigade.

Under wartime military commander General Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb troops - including Pandurevic’s brigade – stormed Srebrenica, a UN-protected Muslim enclave, in July 1995. The onslaught was followed by summary executions of Muslim men and boys in what became Europe’s worst carnage since the Second World War.

The indictment alleges Pandurevic intended to ethnically cleanse Srebrenica in an orchestrated effort to “destroy a part of the Bosnian Muslim people as a national, ethnical or religious group.”

Belgrade has been under intense international pressure to extradite about a dozen suspects still at large.

Pandurevic has said he was innocent of the charges and was going to The Hague to clear his name and “help his nation.”

In a Serb TV interview on Sunday, Pandurevic said he felt “morally responsible” for Srebrenica’s atrocities and “repugnance” at the massacre.

But the two most wanted suspects – Mladic and Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic – remain at large, believed hiding in Serbia or neighbouring Bosnia.