BRUSSELS, April 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Former Serb police chief in Kosovo Sreten Lukic, who was indicted in October 2003 for planningand ordering murders of Kosovo Albanian civilians in 1999, was put on Monday into the custody of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the UN tribunal announced on Monday.

    In a press release emailed to Xinhua by the tribunal press office, The Hague-based tribunal said Sreten Lukic, had been at large for a year and a half, was "transferred to the Detention Unit" of the tribunal on Monday.

    On Oct. 2, 2003, Sreten Lukic was indicted by the tribunal alongside Nebojsa Pavkovic, Vladimir Lazarevic and Vlastimir Djordjevic.

    Sreten Lukic, who was born on March 28, 1955 in Visegrad of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, became head of the MUP (Ministarstvo Unutrasnjih Poslova or Ministry of Interior Affairs) Staff for Kosovo on June 1, 1998.

    "As a superior officer of the MUP, Sreten Lukic was allegedly responsible for ensuring that MUP units in Kosovo, between January1 and June 20, 1999, operated in accordance with decisions made by other members of the joint criminal enterprise and federal and republic laws and regulations," said the tribunal.

    "This means that Lukic is responsible for the crimes charged inthe indictment if he knew or had reason to know that they were about to be committed by his subordinates and failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent them, or to punish his subordinates for committing the crimes," the tribunal added.

    Earlier on Monday, the Serbian government announced that SretenLukic left Belgrade for The Hague on Monday to surrender to the UNtribunal. Enditem