Slovenian Justice Minister Ales Zalar has said that he will deliver the entire documentation about the case of Dragan Paravinja to the Slovenian government's anti-corruption commission following speculations that extradition of this convicted rapist wanted in Serbia was procrastinated as a result of which Paravinja evaded his transfer to Serbia where he should have served a prison term.
The Paravinja case came to the limelight after he was recently suspected of the murder of Antonija Bilic, a 17-year-old girl in Croatia.
Paravinja worked in Slovenia for a haulier from 2007 to 2009. He was arrested twice on an international warrant issued for his arrest in Serbia. On both occasions, Paravinja was released on bail. He finally left Slovenia, where he had applied for asylum, on 5 February 2009, according to the Slovenian justice ministry's data which Minister Zalar presented at a news conference in Ljubljana on Wednesday.
Zalar said that he had personally signed the documentation approving Paravinja's extradition to Serbia on 22 January 2009 and that he had immediately notified Interpol and the court in Kranj which had previously released Paravinja on bail from extradition custody. However, Paravinja had not been arrested upon the minister's order but left Slovenia on 5 February that year.
Zalar said that many omissions and unlawful procrastinations had occurred in this case during the previous government in Slovenia when Lovro Sturm was Slovenia's justice minister.
"The procedure of (Paravinja's) extradition was not conducted properly and lasted too long" Zalar said.
According to him, his predecessor Sturm had allowed, which was not in line with the usual procedure, the postponement in Paravinja's handover to Serbia until the Slovenian Constitutional Court considered an appeal of Paravinja's lawyer against the rejection of asylum which he sought in Slovenia. This procedure lasted until early 2009 and when the court ruled that there were no grounds for that appeal. However, Paravinja had already left Slovenia.
Paravinja is currently in prison in East Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was arrested in Bosnia over the weekend after he fled Croatia.
