By Ksenija Prodanovic Jul 29, 2008, 19:53 GMT
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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