Bosnian Serb camp guard surrenders

The TV pictures shocked the world

A Bosnian Serb who was indicted on war crimes charges in 1995 has surrendered to the Serbian authorities, according to police sources.

Zeljko Meakic served as a prison guard at the notorious Omarska camp near Prijedor in northwestern Bosnia during the war in the early 1990s.

He is one of 18 war crimes suspects who are still being sought by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

A Serbian police official said Mr Meakic would most likely be extradited to the UN tribunal later this week.

The news came as Serbia and Montenegro government officials said that the extradition papers of another suspect, Veselin Sljivancanin, had been signed and that a date would be chosen for his departure for The Hague.

Colonel Sljivancanin was indicted for the 1991 massacre of 200 people near the Croatian town of Vukovar.

Emaciated inmates

Mr Meakic's indictment says that he was "in a position of superior authority" at the Omarska camp, which operated for about five months in the spring and summer of 1992.

Almost 3,000 Muslims and Croats passed through it, and were tortured, beaten and raped.

The indictment says that in addition there were cases of "multiple killings and special terror", and that many prisoners did not survive the camp.

TV pictures of emaciated inmates behind barbed wire at Omarska shocked the world and brought calls for intervention by the international community.

The war crimes tribunal was created the following year.

Several guards of the camp have already been jailed for war crimes.