BELGRADE, April 30 (News Agencies) - A detention order against former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was extended for two months Monday, a Belgrade district court said in a statement, quoted by the Tanjug news agency.
The court decided to extend the investigative custody for an additional two months to allow investigators to probe the former hardline leader on suspicion of abuse of power and corruption.
The official statement said the "detention could be revoked upon a further decision by the court."
Milosevic's lawyer Toma Fila said the decision was expected and had been made to prevent Milosevic fleeing the country or influencing witnesses.
Fila told AFP the custody has been extended "because in the case of his [Milosevic's] release, his supporters might organize his escape."
Milosevic "could also influence witnesses" during the investigation, Fila said, adding that about a dozen of them were scheduled to give their testimonies to the investigating magistrate.
Fila said he would appeal the court's decision, but warned he was "not optimistic" about the chances of his client leaving Belgrade's central jail.
Upon his April 1st arrest, Milosevic was placed in initial investigative custody for one month.
The former leader, who ruled the country with an iron fist through a series of wars and a decade of international isolation, was arrested after a shootout at the presidential residence he still occupied six months after being kicked out of power by a popular uprising in October.
His appeal against the detention period - in which he claimed that the millions of dollars he was accused of stealing went not to him but to aid Serb forces in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia - was rejected by a judicial panel.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte reiterated her call for an immediate transfer of Milosevic to The Hague to face war crimes charges before the U.N. tribunal.
"We demand the immediate transfer of the indictee Milosevic and that of other indictees," said Del Ponte in the interview.
She argued that the trial for crimes against humanity could not be delayed to allow Serbian authorities to hold their hearings of Milosevic on charges of abuse of power and corruption.
"We are ready for a trial for crimes committed in Kosovo. These are very serious crimes," she said.
Milosevic was indicted for ordering a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999, in which hundreds of thousands were driven out of their homes.
Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has argued that Milosevic must face a domestic court first and claims that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) lacks impartiality.
