Greek Justice Minister Kostas Tsiaras will have to decide whether the Serb should be extradited to Croatia, where he is wanted for alleged war crimes committed in 1991 during Yugoslavia’s bloody breakup, or to Serbia, which filed a similar request in October.
The 59-year-old Serbian citizen was arrested in late June after crossing the border, at the border crossing between Greece and North Macedonia, on his way to a resort in northern Greece with his wife and daughter. He is accused of participating in the actions that led to the death of civilians from August 19 to December 14, 1991 in the Croatian cities of Vochin and Hum.
On Thursday, he appeared before the Thessaloniki Board of Appeal, where he said he preferred to be extradited to Serbia.
At his first hearing in a Greek court last July, he said he was a conscript in the Yugoslav army but denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer said that his client would not get a fair trial in Croatia because he would be “sacrificed on the altar of political expediency and revanchism.” However, the court approved his extradition to Croatia, and the country’s Supreme Court upheld this decision.
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