“Mladic’s lawyer was delivered the extradition papers and he has until Monday to appeal,” judge Maja Kovacevic said.
She said Mladic had been examined by a medical commission, “which has determined he is fit for further proceedings.”
Mladic’s lawyer Milos Saljic said he would appeal against the extradition on Monday and insisted that Mladic could not be handed over to The Hague until his health was stable. “He must be provided with adequate treatment before the extradition,” he told reporters.
Mladic’s son Darko said: “We are almost certain he cannot be extradited in such a condition. He is in very bad shape. His right arm is half-paralyzed. His right side is partly numb.”
Mladic, accused of orchestrating the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslims from the town of Srebrenica in July 1995, was found on Thursday in a farmhouse owned by a cousin about 100 km from Belgrade. The arrest of Mladic, the last of the three men accused of instigating ethnic cleansing during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, was expected to remove a major obstacle in the former pariah state’s quest to join the European Union.
Mladic was captured in a routine raid as he headed out to his garden for a predawn walk, three Serbian police officials said on Friday.
The officials said they had no specific intelligence indicating that Mladic was in the house, which belonged to his relative, before they burst into four houses in the village of Lazarevo simultaneously.
Police had not previously raided the village, but have been conducting similar operations throughout Serbia for years in the hunt for Mladic.
They said Mladic identified himself immediately Thursday morning, speaking in a whisper, and was carrying two pistols that he handed over to police.
Mladic was taken to a jail cell at Serbia’s war-crimes court where, a judicial official said, he was given strawberries on Friday after requesting them along with Leo Tolstoy novels and a television set. It wasn’t immediately clear if he’d also been given the books and TV.
The judicial official said Mladic had also asked to visit the Belgrade grave of his daughter Ana, who killed herself in 1994.
The operation to arrest Mladic began around 5 a.m.
Thursday with four white jeeps carrying about two dozen masked special Serbian policemen into Lazarevo, a remote northern Serbian village. Most of its 2,000 people were still asleep.
Mladic was awake inside a yellow brick house with a rusty white fence, unable to sleep because his body ached from ailments he has suffered over the 16 years he had spent on the run from justice, the officials said.
Serbian officials said no one will pick up the $10 million reward for Mladic’s arrest because police were not acting on a tip when they arrested him.
The police officials said they had learned that Mladic moved into the largely Bosnian Serb village of Lazarevo about two years ago, figuring he could be safe with his relatives there.
Mladic was about to venture into the grassy yard for some fresh air when four men in masks and black fatigues without insignia jumped over the fence and burst into the house, grabbing the frail-looking man and forcing him to the floor face down.
“Identify yourself,” shouted one of the policemen. “I’m Ratko Mladic,” he replied in a whisper. “Don’t do something funny,” the officer said demanding the two guns he was carrying. He complied, according to the three officials.
Mladic was pushed into one of the jeeps, which drove full speed out of the village toward the capital, Belgrade, with dust flying, the officials said.
