Ethnic Serb still sought by Hague tribunal

THE LAST FUGITIVE: ONLY GORAN Hadzic (52), an ethnic Serb, is still being sought by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

THE LAST FUGITIVE:ONLY GORAN Hadzic (52), an ethnic Serb, is still being sought by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

He was born in Croatia in September 1958 and worked as a warehouseman prior to the outbreak of war there.

In the spring of 1990, he was elected to the council in the eastern Croatian city of Vukovar and later joined the Serbian Democratic Party.

In 1991, he was elected president of the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia and remained in that position until December 1993.

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In 2004, he fled from his house in Novi Sad, 80km (50 miles) northwest of Belgrade, to avoid arrest.

He is also was wanted in neighbouring Croatia for genocide.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted him in July 2004 on 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1991-1995 conflict.

He is charged with a number of alleged crimes committed in eastern Slavonia. The charges include:

* The murder and persecution of the Croat and non-Serb civilian population;

* The prolonged imprisonment of civilians in detention facilities where it is alleged that torture, beatings and killing was not uncommon;

* The forcible transfer of tens of thousands of non-Serbs from across the area under his control to make it part of a new Serb-dominated state. – (Reuters)