Captured: Radovan Karadzic
Tuesday, 22 Jul 2008 11:25
Radovan Karadzic will be sent to The Hague in the near future
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The capture of war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic is being greeted as a major step forward for international justice – and Serbia.
Mr Karadzic, 63, was forced into hiding in the late 1990s after leading the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-5 conflict.
He was twice indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for his role. The list is a long one: two counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, three counts of violating the laws or customs of war and one count of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
Under his leadership Serbs besieged Sarajevo for 43 months, muddying the waters between military and civilian targets. He is accused of sanctioning the deliberate targeting of civilians, over 12,000 of whom died.
At Srebrenica in July 1995, over 7,500 Muslim men and boys were brutally massacred. Mr Karadzic stands accused of responsibility for the incident.
Other war crimes, including the 'ethnic cleansing' of large parts of Bosnia, using UN peacekeepers as human shields and the widespread rapes of woman and young girls were also recorded.
Mr Karadzic, himself a Bosnian Serb born in Montenegro, had been a poet and sports psychologist before becoming involved in politics.
He emerged as the head of the Serbian Democratic party (SDS) in 1990 and was a figurehead when confrontations between Bosnia's nationalist, Croat and Serb contingents escalated into open war.
After the conflict ended he was forced to step down as SDS leader and go into hiding. Over 150 others were indicted and captured but three, including Mr Karadzic, remained in hiding.
Good news for Serbia
The capture of Momcilo Krajisnik, 61, the speaker for Bosnia's parliament during the conflict, refocused attention on the problem. He was found guilty in September 2006 of the persecution, deportation and deaths of thousands of non-Serbs.
He had been the most senior Bosnian Serb politician to have faced trial for his part in the Bosnian war, after the death of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic earlier that year.
But Mr Karadzic, together with his military chief Ratko Mladic and Croatian Serb official Goran Hadzic, remained on the run.
Serbia has lost a lot of credibility on the international stage as a direct result of this. One expert on the region, a travel writer, told
inthenews.co.uk it is widely believed across the region that senior Serbs know where the suspects were hiding out.
On a trip to Montenegro,
inthenews.co.uk was shown one end of a disused tunnel connecting the town of Cetinje with a mountain peak many kilometres away. "Don't go in there – there are many poisonous snakes," the guide warned.
None of the Montenegrin snakes are especially poisonous, as the writer told me. "Mladic could be in there," she whispered. Perhaps he still is.
At any rate the precise whereabouts of the suspects eluded Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down as prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal in December last year.
"I know that Serbia can give me Mladic. But Karadzic – I don't know in which country of the region is hiding. I know he is in the region, but I could not tell you if it is in a monastery in Montenegro, or in Republika Srpska, or in Serbia," she said at the time.
Her focus on Mr Mladic is good news; it means the harder of the pair to locate has now been found. At the time, of course, it suggested an extent of Serbian complicity.
The arrest of Mr Karadzic will undermine such suspicions and has been hailed as a step forward for Serbia as a result. The country could do with some positive news; it has been politically divided after losing the province of Kosovo to independence earlier this year.
Its opposition went against the grain of international opinion. But now, at least, Serbia has erased a major black mark against its name. Mr Karadzic's capture means the Serbs are prepared to bring the war crime suspects to justice. Serbia's chances of joining the EU have been boosted. And one of the world's most wanted men could pay the price for his alleged crimes soon.
Alex Stevenson