Lovrin said that this was a common response in cases of requests for extradition from other countries. "They (Zagorec and his lawyers), of course, think that it (extradition) should not take place, because if he had meant to come back to Croatia he would already have been here by now," Lovrin told reporters in Zagreb after briefly leaving a meeting of the national council monitoring the implementation of the national anti-corruption programme.
"I should make it clear that their arguments make no sense, because Zagorec has been the subject of a criminal proceeding since 2001 for the same type of crime. Those are serious charges, but that kind of language is commonly used by persons for whom there is a request for extradition," the minister said.
Zagorec served as an assistant defence minister in charge of arms procurement from 1993 to 2000. He is suspected of abuse of office, namely that in 2000 he took from a Defence Ministry safe diamonds he had received from a German arms dealer in 1993 as collateral for five million US dollars from the Croatian Defence Ministry intended for the purchase of weapons for Croatia's defence.
As regards the explanation by British judge Timothy Workman of Britain's refusal to extradite Milan Spanovic, a Croatian Serb whom a Croatian court had convicted in absentia of war crimes, because the case had apparently fallen under the statute of limitations and for fear that he would not have a fair trial in Croatia, Lovrin said that this was an explanation of a judgement by a trial court.
"The case is not final yet and lawyers representing Croatia will appeal the judgement. Every country makes decisions in accordance with its own laws," Lovrin said, adding that the judgement by the British court "does not follow the proclaimed international principle of the need to prosecute and punish war crimes." She noted that sometimes extradition cases take several years to complete.