Extradition

The government approved the extradition of a Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect to the United Nations tribunal at The Hague. Ivana Ramic, a spokeswoman for Serbia's war crimes court, said a court in Belgrade, the capital, rejected former Bosnian Serb police chief Stojan Zupljanin's final appeal. Hours later, a brief statement said the Cabinet had also approved the extradition. The government's decision cleared the final hurdle for Zupljanin's transfer. The U.N. tribunal has indicted Zupljanin on charges of overseeing prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 Balkans war. He was arrested in the Serbian town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run.

A Japanese businessman charged in the 1981 slaying of his wife in downtown Los Angeles has dropped his attempts to halt his extradition from the U.S. territory of Saipan, one of his attorneys said Monday. Kazuyoshi Miura, 61, could be escorted by police to Los Angeles as soon as this week, said attorney Bruce Berline. An LAPD spokeswoman said Monday that a detective has been sent to Saipan. Berline said Miura decided to drop his opposition to extradition after a Los Angeles judge ruled Friday that prosecutors could charge him with conspiracy even though a Japanese high court acquitted him of murder in 1998.

A federal judge on Wednesday approved U.S. plans to send former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to France to face money-laundering charges, finding the French government had given sufficient assurances it would continue to treat Noriega as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Paul Huck followed three other court decisions approving extradition.

Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al Masri, whose sermons celebrated the Sept. 11 attacks and called for gays to be stoned to death, was cleared Thursday for extradition to the U.S. on charges of plotting to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon. But nearly four years after the United States originally sought the transfer, the cleric still has other avenues of appeal, and a final ruling could be weeks or months away, authorities said.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Wednesday that he would extradite the first former paramilitary warlord to face U.S. justice after he violated a government peace deal by ordering crimes from his prison cell. Colombia's Supreme Court earlier authorized Carlos Mario Jimenez to be sent to the United States for trial on drug-running and other charges. Under the Colombian peace deal, paramilitary bosses had their U.S.

Radovan Karadzic, a onetime psychiatrist who led his Bosnian Serb people through a brutal ethnic war, was extradited early today to the international tribunal in The Hague, where he will stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. A fugitive for more than a decade, Karadzic has been in a Serbian jail since his arrest, which was announced July 21.

The extradition of Radovan Karadzic to the war crimes tribunal at The Hague is being hailed as a triumph for the pursuit of international justice and a potential deterrent to brutish leaders tempted to flout the law. But the fact that it took 13 years to apprehend Karadzic tempers the celebration and raises new challenges for the much-criticized court. The passage of time also has resulted in lesser, and perhaps more realistic, expectations of the benefits the trial can produce.

A Mexican man who allegedly confessed to killing at least 10 women in this violent border city has been extradited from the United States, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday. Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz was deported Tuesday to stand trial for aggravated homicide. Granados de la Paz, 30, allegedly acknowledged to Mexican and Texan authorities that he killed at least 10 women near Ciudad Juarez from about 1993 to 2006 as "offerings to Satan," according to the extradition complaint.

The government of President Felipe Calderon is extraditing drug suspects and other fugitives to the United States at a record pace, reflecting a quiet but seismic shift in Mexican policy that many analysts say could help dismantle trafficking gangs. Calderon's administration has handed over more than 150 criminal suspects since coming to power in December 2006. The extradition rate is double what it was before Calderon took office.

A Russian businessman dubbed the "Merchant of Death" sought Monday to prevent his extradition to the United States, telling a court here that he was not involved in a scheme to sell weapons to Colombian rebels. Viktor Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, has long been linked to some of Africa's most notorious conflicts, allegedly supplying arms to former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.