A BOSNIAN Croat general, indicted for crimes against humanity committed during Bosnia's ethnic war, surrendered to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague yesterday.
"I will tell nothing but the truth, I am innocent," Gen Tihomir Blaskic, accompanied by his wife and lawyer and surrounded by bodyguards, declared at Zagreb Airport before departing for the Dutch capital.
Gen Blaskic commanded the Croat militia in Bosnia, the HVO, during the Muslim Croat conflict in 1993. The 35 year old former Yugoslav army officer was indicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) last November over the April 1993, massacre of dozens of Muslims, slaughtered by HVO forces operating in central Bosnia.
He will he the first of either Bosnian Croat or Croatian to appear before the ICT and the first defendant to surrender to the court. Six other Croats have been accused of war crimes by the tribunal, which has mainly indicted Bosnian Serbs.
Gen Blaskic's lawyer, Mr Zvonimir Hodak, said that his client, would spend one night in a prison outside The Hague and then he transferred to a "supervised residence".
Croatia, which sponsored the separatist Bosnian Croats throughout the war in Bosnia, has been strongly criticised for shielding war crimes suspects. Zagreb agreed to give Gen Blaskic up after strong US pressure.
Meanwhile, in Bosnia, a team of war crimes investigators arrived to begin a two week inquiry into suspected mass graves. The investigators are expected to study 11 sites in the former Yugoslav republic where the remains of alleged massacre victims are believed to be buried.
First on their agenda is Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, where several thousand Muslims are thought to have been killed after the enclave was seized by Bosnian Serb forces in July last year.
UN and Nato sources said the team was due to start work today after spending the night in Tuzla.
Yesterday, Bosnia officially joined the World Bank and signed three loans worth 5269 million to finance emergency reconstruction projects. The money is to be spent on revitalising agriculture, transport and water sanitation, three sectors most ravaged by the country's nearly four year conflict.
The World Bank has estimated some $5.1 billion is needed for reconstruction, with 51.2 billion needed in the first year.
Meanwhile, in the north of the country, a dozen prisoners of war left a Bosnian Serb prison in Banja Luka yesterday. They were expected to be freed later in the day, matching a similar release made by the Bosnian Croats of their prisoners.