By ISABEL VINCENT
Posted: 4:26 am
July 20, 2008
SERB MA PUT HEAT ON ENVOYA Serb diplomat whose office helped a hulking basketball player flee upstate assault charges had bowed to pressure from the brute's politically well-connected mother to provide her son with an emergency passport.
In an exclusive interview with The Post last week, the former head of the Serb Consulate in New York said Branka Kovacevic, a prominent Serb psychiatrist and the mother of Miladin Kovacevic, bullied his staff for weeks to get her son out of the country last month.
"She wouldn't give up," said Slobodan Nenadovic, the former Serb consul general fired last week along with Vice Consul Igor Milosevic, who had issued an emergency travel document to allow Kovacevic to flee the country.
Nenadovic claimed he had limited contact with the Kovacevic family, but that Milosevic worked on almost nothing else for a month.
Milosevic, who is facing disciplinary action in Belgrade, has yet to explain why he agreed to issue the travel document after a Broome County judge seized Kovacevic's passport on June 6 when he posted bail.
"I told Miladin that he must face his responsibilities," said Nenadovic, adding that Belgrade authorities made him a scapegoat to appease US authorities when he was sacked last week.
Serbia has refused to extradite Kovacevic, citing its constitution.
Kovacevic was charged in the brutal May 4 beating of fellow Binghamton University student Bryan Steinhauer, a Brooklynite who remains in critical condition.
