Croatian General Ante Gotovina, one of the three most wanted suspects from the Balkan wars of the 1990s, arrived in the Netherlands today to be brought to The Hague war crimes tribunal.
A Spanish CASA 295 military plane carrying Gen Gotovina, arrested in Spain's Canary Islands on Wednesday, landed at Rotterdam airport at lunchtime, an airport spokesman said.
The general is charged with responsibility for the murders of at least 150 Serbs by troops under his command in the aftermath of the 1995 "Operation Storm", when Croatian forces retook parts of the country from Serb rebels.
He had travelled through Asia, Latin America and Europe before Spanish police tracked him down in the Playa de las Americas resort in Tenerife in the Canary Islands. He spent 2 nights in a Madrid jail after Spain's High Court ordered his transfer to the UN court, set up to try war crimes committed as Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s.
Gen Gotovina (50), is the last wanted war crimes suspect from Croatia and his arrest is expected to ease Zagreb's path to joining the European Union, which was long sceptical over how hard Zagreb was trying to hunt a man many Croats consider a national hero.
The arrest is a major boost for the UN court and brought calls for more efforts to catch its most wanted fugitives, Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.