Lawyer using stall tactics to keep Karadzic in Serbia during right-wing rally

The lawyer for Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader facing extradition from Serbia to stand trial for war crimes at an international tribunal, said he has done his utmost to delay his client's appeal process and keep him in Belgrade as long as possible.

Svetozar Vujacic said he mailed an appeal of Karadzic's planned extradition at the last possible minute on Friday from a remote post office in Bosnia and doesn't expect the documents to arrive at the Belgrade court hearing the case anytime soon.

A spokesman for the court said Monday that the appeal hadn't arrived by closing time.

Vujacic said, "I wouldn't rule out that my appeal grows a beard and moustache before it gets here."

Vujacic said Serbian authorities were scrambling to hand over Karadzic to a UN tribunal in The Hague before Serbian ultra-nationalists can hold a massive anti-government rally in Belgrade scheduled for Tuesday evening.

"They are using all illegal means to … send him to The Hague before the rally," Vujacic said. "Karadzic and I want to make sure it does not happen."

The Serbian government worries that the rally could lead to violence in the streets and that ultra-nationalists plan to use force to prevent the extradition of the erstwhile Bosnian Serb leader. The rally organizer — the right-wing Serbian Radical Party — is busing Karadzic's supporters in from all over Serbia and Bosnia.

As a result, the government plans to transfer Karadzic surreptitiously, possibly using unmarked vehicles, decoy cars and covert exits at the prison where he is being held and at the airport.

"Only 10 people in Serbia know exactly what will happen," a senior government source told Reuters news agency. Another official said the transfer "will be done as discreetly as possible," according to Reuters.

Once a panel of three Serb judges decides on the appeal — which they are likely to reject — the case will be handed over to the Serbian government, which issues the final extradition order. The earliest that could now reasonably happen is Wednesday.

Karadzic, 63, was arrested July 21 after eluding officials for more than a decade. He stands accused of masterminding Europe's worst massacre since the Second World War, the killing in 1995 of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia, as part of a genocidal campaign to make Bosnia a Serb-only country.

The 11 charges against Karadzic at the UN tribunal include genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities. The charges relate to the Srebrenica massacre.