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Blagoje Simic, a Yugoslav citizen charged with crimes against humanity committed during the Bosnian war, said on Monday he was surrendering to the UN tribunal that indicted him.
His lawyer, speaking just before Simic boarded a plane for the Netherlands at Belgrade airport, said he was the first Yugoslav citizen to turn himself in to the court in The Hague.
The new reformist leadership in Yugoslavia, the federal state now made up of only Serbia and Montenegro, is under heavy international pressure to begin cooperating with the tribunal.
It faces US economic sanctions if it has not deemed to have begun cooperating by the end of this month.
"This act is absolutely voluntary," a solemn-looking Simic told reporters before departing. "I'm absolutely convinced of my innocence and I'm sure I'll prove it."
Simic has been indicted by the tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws and customs of war committed while he was the top civilian official in the Bosnian town of Samac.
The indictment accuses him and several others of planning and carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Samac after Serb forces took control of the town in April 1992.
"Blagoje Simic is the first Yugoslav citizen who has voluntarily handed himself over to the Hague tribunal," lawyer Igor Pantovic said at the airport.
Former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic surrendered to the tribunal in January this year. She has pleaded not guilty on charges of genocide and other war crimes.
"Mr Simic believes the whole Serbian nation should not be a hostage (to cooperation with the tribunal)," he added.
"There are some advantages from this action as the Hague tribunal has a practise of allowing people who volunteer to surrender to defend themselves as free persons," Pantovic said.
He said Simic, born in 1960 according to his indictment, had first turned himself over to Serbian authorities and asked to be transferred to The Hague.
COPYRIGHT REUTERS
