International Herald Tribune

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16,1998

2 Bosnian Serbs Surrender to Face UN Court

By Colin Soloway

Washington Post Service

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Two Bosnian Serbs indicted on war crimes charges have surrendered in northern Bosnia to representatives of the United Nations war crimes tribunal.

Miroslav Tadic, 60, and Milan Simic, 39, accompanied by U.S. Embassy officials, approached American soldiers on Saturday at the gates of Colt Base, near the town of Bosanski Samac, and were taken into custody.

With their attorney and Mr. Simic's wife, the suspects were escorted to the U.S. divisional headquarters near Tuzla where they were handed over to tribunal representatives and flown on a North Atlantic Treaty Organization aircraft to The Hague.

The two men, accused of organizing a "campaign of terror," are charged with crimes against humanity. Mr. Simic also has violating the rules and customs of war during the "ethnic cleansing," or forcible removal, of Muslims and Croats when Serbian forces took over Bosanski Samac in April 1992.

Mr. Tadic, a former teacher and cafe owner, is accused of organizing the deportation of non-Serbian civilians. Mr. Simic, an economist, is charged with severely beating a Muslim, Muhamed Bicic, who was in custody.

The surrender Saturday, the first of Serbian war crimes suspects, was the result of more than a year of negotiations among tribunal officials and an attorney for Mr. Tadic and Mr. Simic. A third suspect, Simo Zaric, who was the leader of a Serbian territorial defense unit, was also to have surrendered.

"I hope this is the beginning of the end of the demonizing of the Serb people," Mr. Tadic said

before leaving for the U.S. base. "This act is not against the Serb Republic. On the contrary, it will open some processes which will our state and us."

The arrests came less than a week after Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb prime minister, told reporters in Vienna that his new, Western-backed government would do everything it could to encourage suspects to surrender.

The surrender was seen as a step forward for the tribunal in its quest to try the more than 50 indicted war crimes suspects still at large in the countries that once formed Yugoslavia. But court officials worry that the case in Bosanski Samac may be a mixed blessing, and that, as in the case of three Bosnian Croats released in December, the tribunal may not have a strong enough case to prosecute.

A source close to the tribunal said that compared with the torture and murder charges against three other Bosanski Samac suspects, it is difficult to understand why Mr. Tadic and Mr. Simic were indicted. "If what is published in the indictment is all they have, these guys are going source said to walk," the

Source said.