Remember the resounding spanking the Serbian legal authorities received in a London court over their attempt to extradite former Bosnian leader Ejup Ganic to Belgrade on war crimes charges?

Now they are trying their luck in the Austrian courts. Former Yugoslav army general Jovan Divjak has been arrested in Austria on a Serbia-inspired international warrant arising from the 1992 Dobrovoljacka St massacre at the start of the war in Bosnia – B92 story here.

The point here is that Divjak was a senior Serb officer in the Yugoslav Army who refused to be part of Milosevic’s plans and joined the side of the Bosnian forces defending the republic’s newly-proclaimed independence.

So there will be some nasty glee expressed in various Serb quarters that this ‘traitor’ has now been arrested and may get extradited to Belgrade.

Indeed, Republika Srpska leader Dodik has been quick to express the hope that the extradition will succeed, while adding that he also hopes that the Serbian authorities in Belgrade have better prepared their case this time round.

My views on all this were expressed at some length last year – type Ganic into the Search button and you’ll get a number of commentaries. I also offered a word of praise about Jovan back in 2008.

An interesting point is the fact that unlike some fanatical pro-Bosniac voices on the issue, Jovan Divjak (being an honest man) has freely agreed that the Dobrovoljacka St killings were a crime:

RFE/RL: Do you consider what happened in Dobrovoljacka Street to be a crime or not?

Divjak: It is a crime committed by certain individuals but cannot conceivably be attributed to the regular units of the Bosnian Territorial Defense, the police, or the Green Berets as a whole.

One to watch.