This morning’s Dnevni Avaz newspaper in Sarajevo has plenty on the Ejup Ganic story. Here.

For those of you unfortunate enough not to read Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, some of the interesting points in the article as yet unreported in the UK media – British scoop, right here:

  • Mr Ganic’s son Emir is reported as saying that Mrs Thatcher, a ‘very close friend’ of Mr Ganic, has sent her lawyers to help him – they represented him yesterday in court in London
  • Action is in hand to raise £200,000 bail money
  • Ganic is being held not under some sort of Interpol or other arrest warrant but under the 2002 UK/Serbia extradition agreement
  • Which opens a ‘key question’: is Ganic a Serbian citizen and so subject to this agreement, or not?
  • Son Emir says that his father was born in Serbia and had a Yugoslav passport when Yugoslavia broke up, but he never applied for a Serbian one, so he does not have Serbian citizenship
  • British Ambassador in Sarajevo Michael Tatham has said that this situation represents no form of political or diplomatic statement by the British government about past events 
  • Bosniac BH Presidency member Silajdzic is insisting that events in Sarajevo in 1992 are solely the responsibility of Bosnia and that BH and Serbia have signed an agreement to that effect – experts from his office are en route to London to help Ganic
  • Serb BH Presidency member Radmanovic is saying that the arrest of Ganic shows that international legal processes are working as they should

The whole issue may turn on the issue of how Serbian citizenship is defined.

Yugoslav citizens had Yugoslav passports, and many continued using them long after Yugoslavia itself collapsed (they finally expire at the end of this year). They were also ‘citizens’ of their native republic.

Serbia for legal purposes was agreed to be the ‘continuation’ of Yugoslavia. So if a former Yugoslav citizen did not make the positive step to renounce his Yugoslav/Serbian citizenship, did it continue on paper even though that citizen had acquired a new citizenship of another former republic? Can citizenship in that part of the world lapse through desuetude?

Interesting formal point, since of course many Bosnian Serbs and Croats also have citizenship (and passports) of Serbia and Croatia respectively – a galling fact for Bosniac Bosnians who find themselves subject to different visa regimes when they travel. See also the convoluted issue of Serbian passports and people living in Kosovo.

Did Mr Ganic somehow positively do enough to keep his citizenship options open?

A Serbia claim that any former Yugoslav citizen who did not take formal steps to renounce Yugoslav/Serbia citizenship remains a Serbian citizen would lead to the bizarre result that anyone from former Yugoslavia could be subject to an extradition request emanating from Belgrade – not an outcome likely to appeal to international courts.