A Bosnian Croat indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal and accused of planning the 1993 massacre of over 100 Bosnian Muslims is to hand himself over to the court in the next few days, his lawyer told Croatian television yesterday.
"There is no reason why he should not surrender," Mr Tomo Jonjic said, adding that he had talked with his client, Mr Pasko Ljubicic (35), over the telephone on Saturday.
He said that Mr Ljubicic "does not feel guilty, and for most of what he had been charged with he cannot be guilty since at the time he was not in the places named in the indictment".
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Wednesday made public Mr Ljubicic's indictment, which is for acts he is alleged to have carried out during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
Mr Ljubicic (35) has been indicted for his role as a commander of the first company of a battalion of Croatia's military police in attacks on the Muslim villages of Vitez and Busovaca between June 1992 and July 1993.
He is charged with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war in the form of killings and inhumane acts. The indictment singled out his involvement in the planning of the massacre in Ahmici, in which Bosnian Croat forces killed more than 100 Bosnian Muslims, mostly women and children, in April 1993.
Meanwhile, 300,000 Serbs provided a test for the country's fragile ruling coalition yesterday in local elections in communities until recently controlled by allies of the former Yugoslav president, Mr Slobodan Milosevic.
After Mr Milosevic was ousted, the reformers who succeeded him gradually removed the municipal authorities from the 18 communities and replaced them by provisional administrations.
Yesterday, about 300,000 people - 5 per cent of Serbia's electorate - were asked to cast their votes to replace local representatives in the 18 towns won by Mr Milosevic's allies in elections a year ago. Turnout was 40 per cent, according to media reports.
According to the Centre for Free and Democratic Elections (CESID), a watchdog organisation in Belgrade, the vote is a key indicator for early parliamentary elections in Serbia, which could result in a breakdown of the coalition currently in power in Belgrade.