7:29pm UK, Monday March 01, 2010

Rob Cole, Sky News Online

Ex-Bosnian president Ejup Ganic has been arrested at Heathrow Airport over alleged war crimes committed during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Ejup Ganic is accused of being involved in an attack on wounded soldiers

He was arrested as he tried to leave London following a request from the Serbian government.

The former Muslim war-time politician is accused of conspiracy to murder wounded soldiers in breach of the Geneva Convention.

He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court and the Serbian government will now apply for an extradition warrant.

The 63-year-old is one of 19 Bosnians accused of being involved in an attack on soldiers from the Yugoslav People’s Army (YNA) in Sarajevo in May 1992.

The soldiers were injured and said to be retreating at the time – up to 40 were killed.

The YNA was manned mostly by Serbians at the time.

The attack took place at the start of the 1992-95 war, which erupted when Bosnia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia.

Ganic, the highest-ranking ex-Bosnian official named in the warrant, has dismissed the allegations as “ridiculous”.

Dr Ganic served as both vice-president and president of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina after it broke from the former Yugoslavia.

He is currently manager of the private School of Science and Technology in Sarajevo.

The war between Bosnia’s Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives and left the country split between the semi-autonomous Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs’ Republika Srpska.