Miolard Pejic was arrested at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade on an international arrest warrant in connection with the Ovcara farm massacre in Croatia in 1991.

It has been reported that Pejic, who was living in Corby and working as a locksmith, was a member of the Vukovar Territorial Defense during the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s.

The War Crimes Prosecution states that Pejic, born in Vukovar in Croatia, was arrested on March 19.

The prosecution says an application to conduct an investigation, on the basis of which he was apprehended, was submitted back in December 2003.

However, he could not be arrested or questioned because he was living and working in Corby.

As a member of the Vukovar Territorial Defense, he is suspected of participating in the murder of around 260 Croatian prisoners-of-war at Ovcara farm in November 1991

When Serb forces took control of Vukovar in November 1991, several hundred people took refuge in the town's hospital in the hope that they would be evacuated in the presence of neutral observers.

But instead of beingh evacuated, about 400 individuals including wounded patients, soldiers, hospital staff and Croatian political activists, were removed from the hospital by Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitary forces.

According to The Hague Tribunal's indictment, which was originally issued in 1995, about 300 men were taken to Ovcara farm four kilometres outside Vukovar.

The detainees were beaten up and some died of their injuries. About 260 of them were executed and then buried in a mass grave.

It took several years of exhumations and painstaking investigations to gather the evidence that formed the basis of the Tribunal's indictment.

Vukovar was the only region of Croatia's rebel Serb-held areas to escape capture by the Croatian army in 1995. It was finally reintegrated with Croatia in 1998.

Full report in Tuesday's Chronicle & Echo.