WAR crimes prosecutors could decide within weeks whether to indict or release two Bosnian Serb officers taken from Sarajevo to a Dutch jail, the UN tribunal for former Yugoslavia said yesterday.
Gen Djordje Djukic and Col Aleksa Krsmanovic were flown to a UN detention unit inside Scheveningen jail near The Hague after their arrest by Bosnian authorities on January 30th.
Mr Christian Chartier, the tribunal spokesman, stressed that the two men, accused of war crimes by the Bosnian government, were suspects and had not yet been indicted by the tribunal.
Asked at a news conference when a decision on a formal indictment could be expected, he replied "Within weeks".
The two men were removed from a Sarajevo jail late on Monday and flown in a Nato C-130 transport plane to the Netherlands, before being transferred to The Hague.
"They arrived at the UN detention unit at 11.06 p.m. local time and they will be held there in custody until such time as the prosecution office has decided whether to indict them or release them," Mr Chartier said.
The tribunal is holding the officers under Rule 40 of its rule book, which allows provisional arrest in urgent cases.
Bosnian authorities arrested them on suspicion of killing civilians in the Sarajevo area.
Their swift extradition, the first removal of suspected war criminals from former Yugoslavia to tribunal custody, brings the number of tribunal prisoners to three.
So far the tribunal has indicted 52 suspects 45 Serbs and seven Croats for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only one suspect is in custody, Mr Dusan "Dusko" Tadic, a Bosaian Serb, who was arrested in Germany.