(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Australian governments have spent over $2 million on a Perth man fighting extradition to Croatia over alleged war crimes.
Now, Daniel Snedden's case -- in its eighth year before the courts -- stands in the way of a war crimes extradition request by Croatia for a second Australian man.
Kristina Kukolja has more.
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Daniel Snedden rejects the allegations outlined in Croatia's extradition request that he committed war crimes as the commander of a Serb paramilitary unit in the 1990s.
Mr Snedden, who is also known as Dragan Vasiljkovic, or Captain Dragan, remains detained without charge in Sydney's Parklea Prison.
The federal Attorney General's Department has told SBS that the Commonwealth government has, to date, incurred around $950,000 in legal expenses responding to Mr Snedden's challenges in the courts.
That's in addition to around $500,000 it cost the Australian Federal Police to find him when he went missing for several weeks in 2010.
And based on publicly-available data from New South Wales Corrective Services, it's estimated that his imprisonment has cost the NSW Government more than half a million dollars.
Luka Budak, from the Federation of Croatian Clubs and Associations of Australia and New Zealand, says it's a financial burden Australian taxpayers shouldn't have to carry.
"I'm really stunned to hear that kind of money has been spent on this case. As a taxpayer this is incredible. I think our federal government as a lot of better projects to spend money on than defending an alleged war criminal."
The federal Attorney General's Department says Mr Snedden has challenged his extradition process in 12 separate matters, starting in 2006.
That includes challenges against the constitutional basis of Australia's legislative framework for extradition, against a federal government finding he was eligible for surrender, and against his imprisonment.
Before the full Federal Court his lawyers are now attempting to dispute the validity of the extradition order on procedural grounds -- arguing, in part, that the process is taking far too long.
Journalist Mark Aarons has written extensively about the presence of alleged war criminals in Australia.
"Vasiljkovic in this case deserves a considerable part of the discredit for postponements... and he has only got himself to blame for pursuing those legal avenues. But the courts themselves, I think, have contributed significantly to the delays and the politicians have been the cream on the top of that. They have just simply failed to deal with the paperwork that's been sitting on their desk recommending extradition should be pursued for, in some cases, more than a year the Justice Minister has failed to deal with it."
The outcome of the Snedden case looms large over another more recent extradition matter.
Croatian authorities want to prosecute a second Australian citizen -- Melbourne man Predrag Japranin -- for allegedly having links to the killing of civilians during the Croatian war.
But a spokesman for the Croatian Justice Ministry told SBS it would hold off on a formal request for Mr Japranin's extradition until the Snedden case is resolved.
Deeply familiar with Daniel Snedden's history in the Balkans is Melbourne barrister Gideon Boas, once a prosecution lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
He was present when Mr Snedden testified in the war crimes trial of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
"It is unusual in the sense that one won't necessarily determine the other. Snedden's request and circumstances are particular to his case, although no doubt the role that others play may be similar in nature and determination of those matters will assist in understanding what matters come before the court and how they'll be resolved."
Gideon Boas believes Australia should have in place legal mechanisms to investigate and prosecute war crimes allegations.
"I think as world citizens and as participants in programs and courts of international criminal justice, given our participation in the UN Security Council, given our involvement in the International Criminal Court, I think it behoves Australia to take a more active role. There is research that there are a fairly large number of war criminals within Australia who've come from a variety of conflict zones. It's not known precisely how many. There were prosecutions of particularly several Ukrainian war criminals from the Nazi regime during World War Two that occured in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I think there's a sense that a lot of work was done, several trials were held, not to really any great success."
Marc Aarons questions whether there's enough political will for such trials to resume.
"The failure of those trials, I think, poisoned the politicians to the idea that we had the resonsibility to do anything about these people and I'm afraid to say that this is being translated down the years for the last 30 years or so to where we are today where we still have no effective legal sanction in Australia against such people and no investigative power, no investigative body capable of the forensic work that is needed to be done that is quite unique in criminal investigations."
If Mr Snedden is released into Croatian custody he will become the first Australian citizen to be extradited overseas in connection with war crimes allegations.
The Attorney General's Department says the Australian Government is committed to giving effect to the international crime cooperation obligations, including extraditing persons where they are wanted in another country.
It says the Australian Government is concerned to ensure that Australia does not become a safe haven for alleged perpetrators of war crimes.
Daniel Snedden's lawyer Dan Mori has declined an interview with SBS.
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