ZAGREB - Croatia is ready to extradite former Macedonian interior minister Ljube Boskovski, currently in jail in the country, to the UN war crimes tribunal that charged him with war crimes, Justice Minister Vesna Skare-Ozbolt said Monday.
"He will be extradited. The UN war crimes court's statute supersedes national legislation," Skare-Ozbolt told AFP.
Boskovski is to undergo the "same procedure" as other Croatians handed over to the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague, she said. The minister added that no request regarding Boskovski's extradition to The Hague has arrived to Zagreb yet.
Boskovski, who has both Croatian and Macedonian citizenship, was arrested and detained in Croatia in August last year on a warrant issued by Skopje accusing him of the murder of seven South Asian immigrants in 2002. In February Zagreb indicted him over the same charges.
A Macedonian interior ministry spokeswoman said in Skopje earlier Monday that Boskovski and his bodyguard Johan Trculovski have been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
"The ICTY has sent us the indictment of Ljube Boskovski and Johan Trculovski for violation of the rules and customs of war," Mirjana Ilieva told AFP.
Ilieva said Trculovski was arrested in Skopje Monday and would soon be transferred to The Hague.
The seven immigrants -- six from Pakistan and one from India -- for whom Boskovski is charged in Croatia were killed in March 2002 by Macedonian special forces. They have been falsely accused of having planned attacks against Western embassies in Skopje at a time when Boskovski was interior minister.
Prosecutors argue Boskovski hoped to win favour for Macedonia from the United States as an ally in the "war on terror" by claiming that the murdered men were part of a terrorist cell.
Boskovski, jailed in the northern Adriatic town of Pula, has denied masterminding the operation.
Married to a Croatian, Boskovski obtained Croatian nationality in 1993. He lived in Croatia for 20 years before returning to Macedonia in 1999.
03/14/2005 19:45 GMT