Serbia's Appellate Court has quashed a decision by the High Court in Sabac on the extradition of Bozidar Vucurevic, the wartime mayor of the Bosnian town of Trebinje, to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Appellate Court spokeswoman Mirjana Piljic said on Friday.
She said the court found that the pleas filed by Croatia and Bosnia were within the remit of the Belgrade High Court's war crimes department.
The Appellate Court made its decision after considering the appeals Vucurevic's attorneys filed against the Sabac court's decision allowing his extradition and extending his detention.
The Appellate Court also quashed the Sabac court's decision extending Vucurevic's detention but ordered he remain in custody until a further decision by the trial court. Vucurevic was then transferred from Sabac to a Belgrade prison given that the initial decision to place him in custody, handed down after his arrest, is still in force.
Vucurevic was arrested in Serbia in early April on a warrant issued in Croatia. The Sabac High Court decided in mid-April that all conditions had been met to transfer him to Croatia and Bosnia.
Croatia has indicted Vucurevic for the shelling of Dubrovnik in the early 1990s, when he was mayor of the southern Bosnian town of Trebinje. The County Prosecutor's Office in Dubrovnik indicted him in October 2008 for war crimes against civilians in the Dubrovnik area and the destruction of cultural and historical monuments between 1991 and 1995.
The decision on whether Vucurevic will be extradited and to which country will be made by Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic.
