Belgrade - Thousands of Serbs rallied Tuesday for war crimes
suspect Radovan Karadzic's freedom, chanting nationalist slogans and
cheering speakers who denounced the country's pro-Western government.
A crowd estimated at more than 10,000 packed a downtown Belgrade
square after dark - fewer than expected, but still the biggest show
of defiance to President Boris Tadic since Serbian authorities
arrested Karadzic last week, ending 12 years on the run.
With Serbia poised to extradite Karadzic to face UN war crimes
charges for his role in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, speakers held up the
former Bosnian Serb leader a hero, called The Hague tribunal an 'evil
beast' and railed against the United States.
'Radovan's name will be in the hearts of unborn children who will
live in our Serbia, while Tadic's will be forgotten and worthless.
May God kill you,' shouted deputy parliament speaker Natasa
Jovanovic, a member of the ultranationalist opposition Radical Party.
Others praised fugitive war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic,
Karadzic's former military chief, and Radical leader Vojislav Seselj,
who is on trial for war crimes at The Hague tribunal.
'It's time to shake in rage and say: Enough,' said Aleksandar
Vulin, a hardline nationalist politician. 'It's time to spread our
flags of freedom.'
Strong police forces were in place at major embassies, government
buildings, and on the march route's streets.
When the Radical party organized a major protest against Kosovo's
independence from Serbia in February, mobs torched the US and other
embassies and looted stores in the Serb capital.
The US embassy in Serbia closed early Tuesday because of the rally
and warned citizens to avoid downtown Belgrade.
Karadzic's extradition to face genocide charges bogged down
Tuesday in a tug-of-war between his lawyers and a Serbian court that
has to approve his handover to The Hague.
The tribunal has indicted Karadzic on charges including genocide
and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1992-95 Bosnian war,
which left an estimated 100,000 dead. The genocide charges relate to
the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslim men and boys.
A lawyer for the former Bosnian Serb leader has said he would file
the appeal by last Friday, but the special war crimes court in
Belgrade has yet to receive such a motion, court spokeswoman Ivana
Ramic told reporters.
The court has no legal deadline to wait for the appeal and will
wait 'a reasonable amount of time' before extraditing Karadzic, Ramic
said Tuesday. She didn't specify when that might happen.
Dusan Ignjatovic, top Serbian official for cooperation with The
Hague said Karadzic will be extradited to The Hague by the end of the
week.
Ignjatovic told Tanjug state agency that said Karadzic's lawyer
apparently failed to appeal against extradition.
'I don't think the appeal exists. If it did, it would have arrived
in the court by now,' said Ignjatovic, who heads the Serbian
government's office of cooperation with The Hague.
Since Karadzic's July 21 arrest, hundreds of protesters have
gathered daily in Belgrade to denounce Tadic and the arrest of a
'Serbian hero.' Some of the protests turned violent.
Karadzic's status as one of the top war crimes suspects in the
Balkans, and the uncertainty surrounding his appeal, raised
speculation by media and local analysts that he will be spirited to
The Hague in the early morning, likely from an army airport in
Belgrade.
Serbia's reward for full cooperation with the tribunal is the hope
of eventual European Union membership. That would likely also require
handing over Mladic, a former general who served as Karadzic's
military chief.
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