Serbian ultra-nationalist and war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj is being held in the UN detention centre near The Hague after he surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal.
The Serb maverick politician is charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with crimes against humanity and war crimes including persecution, extermination, murder and torture in Bosnia, Croatia and in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.
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Serbian war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj
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An ally of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, Seselj denies all charges and voluntarily flew in to The Hague from Belgrade to turn himself in to the UN tribunal.
"The most important thing for Serbia is that I am the last Serb to surrender," he said before boarding his plane in Belgrade, where he was seen off amid a heavy police presence and around 100 of his loyal supporters.
More than 10,000 of his supporters turned out yesterday for a rally in downtown Belgrade, where the 48-year-old gave a defiant speech urging his countrymen not to become "traitors" who hand over war crimes suspects to the court.
"God did not want me to die on the front line, with Serbian heroes, but I will go to The Hague to defend Serbian national interests," he said.
He urged the crowd to protect the two men most wanted by the court for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serb war-time leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as top officers in the former Yugoslav army.
"All Serbian heroes should unite and not allow those traitors to hand over the Serbs to The Hague," he said. "They think they will put me on trial there, in The Hague, but I will put the Americans and NATO on trial."
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Seselj, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), first made a name for himself as leader of a paramilitary group fighting alongside rebel Serb forces in Croatia in 1991. Throughout the Balkan wars of the early 1990s he funnelled arms and supplies to Serb militias, which were also backed by Milosevic and the Yugoslav army.
During the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, Seselj threatened to bombard any country - including Italy - that tried to intervene militarily against the Serbs. He clashed with Milosevic on several occasions but later became deputy Serbian prime minister in his autocratic regime, and remained allied with the former strongman until his fall in October 2000.
AFP