Retired Yugoslav general Pavle Strugar, indicted for war crimes during the 1991-92 Croatian war, left here on Sunday for the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the first resident of Yugoslavia to hand himself over voluntarily.
Strugar, 68, a former commander of the Yugoslav navy, is one of four high-ranking Yugoslav military officers charged with leading the three-month siege of Dubrovnik, a medieval walled city on the Adriatic and a UNESCO World Heritage site, during the Croatian war.
He and three other army and navy officers are charged with war crimes and violating the Geneva Convention during the war.
Strugar refused to speak to journalists before his departure on board a plane of Montenegrin airline Blueline but spoke to Montenegrin television which accompanied him on the trip.
"I'm not a criminal... I am convinced I will be able to prove my innocence at The Hague," he told the television.
Strugar, originally from the Serbian province of Kosovo, had spent the last two weeks in a Podgorica hospital with kidney problems. The Montenegrin government had struck a deal with the tribunal, offering guarantees to enable Strugar to remain free pending the start of his trial.
Another of the four officers, Vice-Admiral Miodrag Jokic, has also said he is ready to appear before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on similar charges, an official with Serbia's New Democracy party said recently.
Of the other two, Vladimir Kovacevic, nicknamed Rambo, is currently being detained in Spuz, near Podgorica on other charges, while the whereabouts of Milan Zec, until recently active in the Yugoslav army, are unknown -- Yugoslavia, (AFP)
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