Yesterday, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 46-year-old Serge Brammertz, who took up his post on January 1, visited Serbia. This is his first visit to Belgrade. The prosecutor met with the country's top leadership, including President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Mr. Brammertz again called on Serbian authorities to cooperate in capturing the four main suspects remaining at large in crimes committed in the Balkans in the 1990s, most notably former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. He called their arrest and transfer to the Hague tribunal “a matter of critical importance” for Serbia.
In response, the Serbian authorities reminded Brammertz about the scandalous acquittal on April 3 of the former field commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army and ex-head of the regional government Ramush Haradinaj. Kostunica said the decision “calls into question the legitimacy of the tribunal.” Brammertz assured that his department is “studying this verdict to determine possible grounds for filing an appeal.” The names of Haradinaj and the current Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, appear in a recent scandalous book by Serge Brammertz's predecessor, Carla del Ponte, where they are named as the organizers of a secret international network of traffickers in the organs of hundreds of murdered Kosovo Serbs.
