Milan Lukić, the long-sought after Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive, was transferred on Tuesday to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague after almost seven years evading the war crimes Tribunal as well as Serbian authorities.

On 21 February 2006, Lukić was brought into the Tribunal’s custody having been transferred from Argentina, where he was arrested in August 2005.

The Tribunal first indicted Milan Lukić on 26 October 1998 together with his cousin Sredoje Lukić and Mitar Vasiljević, a close family friend. According to the indictment, Milan Lukić formed a group of Bosnian Serb paramilitaries in spring 1992 in Višegrad, south-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Referred to as "White Eagles" and "Avengers," the indictment states the group worked with local police and military units to spread terror among the local Muslim population.

The indictment charges Milan Lukić with murdering, severely beating, unlawfully detaining and terrorising Bosnian Muslim and other non-Serb civilians, as well as destroying and looting their homes and personal property.

Among the incidents with which he is charged, the indictment alleges that on or about 14 June 1992, Milan Lukić, Sredoje Lukić and others forced approximately 70 Bosnian Muslim women, children and elderly men into a house in Višegrad. They barricaded the house, set it on fire and shot at those who tried to escape by climbing out the windows. Almost everyone locked in the house was killed, including 18 children between the ages of two days and 14 years.

The indictment charges Milan Lukić and Sredoje Lukić with killing another 70 or so Bosnian Muslims victims in a similar incident on or about 27 June 1992. It alleges that they, and others, barricaded the victims into a house near Višegrad and set it on fire, killing all but one survivor, including six children under the age of 11.

Milan Lukić is also charged with killing five of seven Bosnian Muslim men who were shot on the bank of the River Drina on or about 7 June 1992. Mitar Vasiljević has been tried and convicted before the Tribunal to 15 years’ imprisonment for involvement in this particular crime and is currently serving his sentence in Austria.
Milan Lukić joins his cousin Sredoje Lukić in the Tribunal’s Detention Unit to await trial. Sredoje Lukić came into the Tribunal’s custody on 16 September 2005.

It is not only the ICTY that has actively sought the war crimes suspect. In 2003, a court in Belgrade found Milan Lukić and three other men guilty of torturing and murdering 16 Muslim civilians whom they abducted from a bus travelling from Serbia to Bosnia in 1992. It sentenced Lukić in absentia to 20 years in prison.

Milan Lukić’s made his initial appearance in the Tribunal on Friday, 24 February. The Accused pleaded not guilty to all 21 counts against him with his acting defence lawyer emphatically expressing his client's intention to fight the charges. A date for the trial will be announced in due course.

Press release of the ICTY