Australian Serbs to defend Captain Dragan

Australia's Serb community vowed to fund a legal battle to stop the extradition of a former Serb commander.

Izvor: Reuters

Monday, 16.04.2007.

11:26

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Australian Serbs to defend Captain Dragan

However, a group dubbed “Serbs for Justice and Democracy” said it had raised US$ 416,000 towards a USS$1 million fund to take Vasiljković's defense to Australia's High Court, saying the case against him was a "witch hunt".

"We will be paying. It doesn't matter how much or how long it takes, it doesn't matter if it's US$1 million," Committee President George Bubalo told Reuters.

A lower court judge last week ruled Vasiljković was eligible for surrender to Croatian authorities, giving his legal team 15 days to lodge documents with a federal appeal court.

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 moved to Australia as a 12-year-old, but returned to Serbia in 1991 and allegedly ordered troops in the self-proclaimed republic of Srpska Krajina to fire on civilians in the town of Glina.

Vasiljković in a statement written in jail last December dismissed the charges against him as malicious and said his alleged war record was "myth and rumour".

"I believe any judge who found me innocent could no longer live safely in Croatia," he said.

Vasiljković, Bubalo said, had never been indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

"There is no evidence Dragan did anything wrong," Bubalo said.

If Vasiljković loses his appeals against the extradition, Australia's Justice Minister David Johnston will make the final decision on whether to send him to Croatia to face trial.

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