Serb war crimes suspect arrested in Norway

Serb war crimes suspect arrested in Norway

Damir Sireta, 43, was detained in Norway after an international arrest warrant was issued for him, the Serbian war crimes prosecution office said in a statement.

In 2000, Sireta was sentenced in absentia by a Croatian court to 12 years in prison for separate war crimes committed by Serb troops in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar.

Espen Skjerven, a lawyer for the national crime police, told Norway's state NRK radio that a Croatian citizen was arrested in Norway on October 6. He declined to confirm the suspect's name, or estimate how long the extradition process might take.

We have, based on a request by Croatian authorities, arrested and detained in jail a Croatian citizen," Skjerven said. "He was convicted of war crimes, more precisely murder in Vukovar in Croatia in 1991."

It was not immediately clear whether Serbia's extradition request will be considered by Norwegian authorities.

Sireta is "suspected of taking part in the execution of 200 prisoners of war on the Ovčara farm" near Vukovar in November 1991, the Serbian prosecutor's statement said.

Another 15 Croatian Serb paramilitaries have recently been convicted by Serbia's war crimes court and sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for their parts in the killings. The investigation into Sireta's suspected role was kept separate because he was on the run. Sireta has not been charged.

Croatia's 1991 declaration of independence from the former Yugoslavia triggered a rebellion by its ethnic Serbs, who with Belgrade's backing captured a third of the republic's territory. The rebellion was crushed in 1995, and Croatia recaptured the territories.

While most of those captured in Vukovar were eventually released, about 200 were taken from a hospital soon after their capture and gunned down at the nearby pig farm in the village of Ovčara.

Sireta, a member of a paramilitary Croatian Serb "territorial defense" unit, allegedly took part in the execution when the Croatian POWs were separated into groups of about eight and sprayed with machine-gun fire before being buried in a mass grave.

The Ovčara case has been a key test for Serbia's judiciary and its ability to punish those responsible for atrocities committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s under former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Three Yugoslav Army officers are charged in the case and are facing trial before the Netherlands-based U.N. war crimes court, which deals with high-level suspects.