Last update: Sat Jul 26 2008 12:32:52

Karadzic appeal deadline passes

Former Serbian warlord Radovan Karadzic is facing extradition to The Hague on Monday.

The leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the 1992-95 war, who faces two genocide charges, had until midnight on Friday to appeal against an order to send him to a UN war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

There was no word from his lawyers that they had lodged an appeal, and Serbia's justice minister is expected to sign an extradition order on Monday.

Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic are indicted for genocide over the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. Mladic and one other war crimes suspect are still at large.

The former leader was arrested this week after eleven years in hiding, and is now held in a Belgrade prison.

Before his capture Karadzic, disguised as a new-age doctor, occupied a high-rise, concrete tower block in the drab suburb of New Belgrade and frequented a Serb hardliners bar.

It emerged that he evaded capture last year when Austrian police raided a Vienna apartment where he was staying but did not recognise him.

The Austrian media said police found the bearded, white-haired man when they raided the apartment of the girlfriend of a Serb man suspected of having shot dead another Serb in a Vienna cafe in May 2007.

When the police asked him to identify himself, reports said he showed a Croat passport under the name Petar Glumac and added he was in Vienna for training.

The Austrian Interior Ministry confirmed the raid, which took place on May 4, 2007, and said policemen who took part in it only recognised Karadzic as the man they saw in the apartment when they saw his pictures after his capture.

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