Australia set to extradite Serb

Australia set to extradite Serb

"There's more litigation to come. There's already other litigation afoot in the federal court which embraces essential issues in this case," Slowgrove told reporters in Sydney.

Croatia holds Vasiljković responsible for torturing and killing Croat soldiers and civilians, as well as killing a foreign journalist, when he commanded a Serb paramilitary unit during Croatia's 1991-95 war of independence.

Vasiljković has denied war crimes, but admits training Serbian recruits, killing in combat and interrogating enemy troops.

The Croatian authorities believe he was a Serb paramilitary leader, personally responsible for a heinous catalogue of war crimes in the early 1990s.

He is accused of commanding a unit of the Serbian Red Beret paramilitaries, which allegedly slaughtered civilians, raped women and killed hospital patients.

It is suspected that Vasiljković personally ordered the atrocities.

According to court documents, he had lived in Australia since 1969 but left the country in the early 1990s to fight in the Balkans.

Afterwards he returned to live in Perth in Western Australia, where he worked as a golf instructor until his arrest in January last year.

The 51-year-old has long argued that he was detained illegally because Australia has no extradition treaty with Croatia. But a court in Sydney ruled that he was eligible for surrender to Croatia.

If asiljkovic fails to win an appeal against the ruling, he will become the first person to be extradited from Australia to face war crimes charges.