Top Milosevic aide flies to Hague

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A senior aide to Yugoslav ex-President Slobodan Milosevic has surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague.

Nikola Sainovic, 53, a former deputy prime minister wanted for alleged war crimes in Kosovo, is the second most important political figure to face war crimes charges after Milosevic.

He was among five indicted war crimes suspects still in Yugoslavia who had said they would turn themselves in rather than subject themselves to arrest and extradition for alleged Balkans war atrocities.

Sainovic was the former president's security adviser in charge of Kosovo during NATO's 1999 bombardment of Yugoslavia.

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A second indicted suspect, former Bosnian Serb prison official Momcilo Gruban, also surrendered to the tribunal on Thursday after flying with Sainovic to the Netherlands.

Gruban is charged with presiding over the killing, rape, sexual assault, beating and humiliation of non-Serbs at the notorious Omarska prison camp in Bosnia in 1992.

Upon arrival they were taken to a U.N. detention facility outside The Hague, joining Milosevic and dozens of other suspects from the former Yugoslavia.

"They have arrived in the detention centre," said the U.N. tribunal's spokesman, Jim Landale. "We most welcome their arrival as a necessary development."

Sainovic, 53, was Milosevic's security adviser in charge of Kosovo during NATO's 78-day bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Ojdanic said it was his "legal obligation" to surrender to The Hague tribunal

He was charged along with Milosevic by the tribunal for crimes against humanity during a government crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Some 800,000 of them fled their homes in the province and thousands were killed.

The tribunal's indictment charges that Sainovic and others "planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in a campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian civilians living in Kosovo."

Gruban was a warden in the Serb-run Omarska prison camp for Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He is charged by the tribunal with the "murder, sexual harassment and torture" of inmates.

Prison workers subordinate to Gruban and others "regularly and openly killed, raped, tortured, beat, and otherwise subjected prisoners to conditions of constant humiliation, degradation, and fear of death," the indictment alleges.

Sainovic and Gruban are among 24 Serbs on the U.N. court's list of suspects wanted for alleged war crimes committed during the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

The majority -- including the most-wanted fugitives, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime commander, General Ratko Mladic -- have declined to surrender voluntarily and now face possible arrest and extradition, the Justice Ministry has said.

Former Yugoslav army commander General Dragoljub Ojdanic surrendered to The Hague last Thursday. He pleaded innocent on Friday to charges of killing ethnic Albanians and driving others from Kosovo, claiming he was fighting terrorists in the disputed Serb province.

Yugoslavia's current leadership, which extradited Milosevic to The Hague last year, has been under strong Western pressure to hand over the remaining suspects or risk losing millions of dollars in badly needed U.S. aid.

Pro-Western politicians earlier this month lobbied the Yugoslav parliament to enact a law allowing the extraditions. The government then issued a deadline to the wanted men to surrender or face arrest.

Others who have declared their readiness to surrender include former Croatian Serb rebel leader Milan Martic and former army officers Mile Mrksic and Vladimir Kovacevic.

Martic's lawyer, Strahinja Kastratovic, said Tuesday that his client would surrender to The Hague next week. He did not specify a date.