War Crimes Panel Widens Arrest Warrant for Serb

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia issued a wider-ranging arrest warrant Friday for Milan Martic, a Serbian leader charged with ordering a terror bombing of Zagreb, Croatia.

Martic, speaking from his refuge in the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka in Bosnia-Herzegovina, vowed that he would not submit to the tribunal.

As leader of the Croatian Serbs, Martic ordered two cluster-bomb attacks on the Croatian capital last May 2 and 3 in retaliation for a Croatian army offensive. Seven civilians were killed.

The U.N. tribunal indicted Martic in July for the attack, but he has not been arrested, prompting it to issue the wider-ranging warrant.

Martic asserts that he ordered the bombing to protect Croatian Serbs fleeing the Croatian offensive.

He condemned the tribunal’s latest warrant, which makes him a fugitive anywhere in the world. The initial warrant allowed for his arrest in Bosnia, Croatia or Serbia.

Separately, a former Croatian soldier in the Bosnian Serb army was arrested by Belgrade police in Paris.

Drazen Erdemovic, 25, confessed to participating in the massacre of Muslim civilians after the fall of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July. Erdemovic told Le Figaro that, as part of an eight-man execution squad, he shot and killed 70 Muslims.

He said the squad killed at least 1,200 people in less than six hours on July 20.