Serbia urges Bulgaria to extradite war crimes suspect

SERBIA CALLED on neighbouring Bulgaria yesterday to extradite former Kosovo prime minister Agim Ceku, after he was held on an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

Bulgarian police detained Mr Ceku on Tuesday night as he crossed the border from Macedonia, on his way to Sofia to attend meetings on Kosovo’s Nato membership ambitions.

Serbia accuses Mr Ceku, a senior commander of Kosovo’s ethnic-Albanian fighters in their 1998-1999 war with Belgrade’s forces, of leading a unit that murdered hundreds of Serb civilians.

Kosovo insists that such claims are politically motivated attacks against a fledgling state that finally claimed full independence from Belgrade last year, following nine years of United Nations administration.

“Agim Ceku will be detained for a further 72 hours from Wednesday. The Serbian side must present its case for extradition to the Bulgarian court within a period of 40 days,” said Bulgarian prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov.

Serbia said that it had already filed an extradition request, and justice minister Snezana Malovic said she hoped that “Bulgaria will promptly act upon our request and that the answer will be positive”.

Mr Ceku has previously been arrested on the same warrant in Hungary and Slovenia, but neither country extradited him to Serbia. Last month, he was expelled from Colombia after Belgrade pressed for his arrest, but he travelled safely back to Kosovo through mainland Europe.

“Serbia has lost the right to control the movements of Kosovars long ago, so this arrest is simply unacceptable,” Kosovo’s government said in.

“Once again, we call on the international organisations that deal with these matters to stop following these outdated and purely political warrants that come from the time of Slobodan Milosevic.”

Former Bulgarian foreign minister Solomon Pasi said Mr Ceku was coming to Sofia at the invitation of the Atlantic Club, a non-governmental organisation, to discuss Kosovo’s hopes for Nato membership.