UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 21 July 2008 --one-time Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was detained today in Serbia. He has been wanted by international authorities since 1995 and he is charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, persecutions, deportation, inhumane acts, and more.

The allegations facing sixty-three year old stem from his action while president of Republika Srpska, head of the Serbian Democratic Party and Supreme Commander of Bosnian Serb military forces. He is accused of participating in efforts to seize parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and force out non-Serbs. He is also implicated in the 1995 Srebrenica killing of 8,000 Muslims and bombardment of Sarajevo , which contained noncombatants.

With the arrest of Mr. Karadžić, there are now only two important Serbian leaders still at large, Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić. At the moment, he is still in Serbian custody and it has not yet been announced when he will be turned over to the Hague .

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), set up in the Hague to try those accused of war crimes during the war in the former Yugoslavia , called Mr. Karadzić’s capture a “milestone in cooperation” between Serbia and the ICTY.

Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said, “This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade.” “It is also an important day,” he added, “for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.”

This is the second major arrest in six weeks of a fugitive from Yugoslavia . In June, Stojan Župljanin was detained by the Serbian authorities after an earlier effort to get him in custody failed.  Following the apprehension of Župljanin, the ICTY prosecutor opined that Bosnia Serb leaders still on the run would soon be caught.

Olga Kavran, spokesperson for the Prosecutor of the UN ICTY said on 11 June, “We hope, of course, that Župljanin will be in The Hague shortly and that he will soon be followed by the remaining three fugitives –Radovan Karadžic, Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadžic.” Today’s arrest seems to prove the ICTY right and to offer further hope that the last two men being sought will be found and brought to the Hague stand trial in the near future.

It is a substantial change from December 2007 when the departing ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte claimed to no longer be hopeful that Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadžic would be apprehended before long. She held that “it is a stain on the International Tribunal’s work that two individuals indicted for genocide and responsible for the worst crimes committed in Europe since the Second World War are still fugitives.” Now Karadžic has been arrested.

It is ironic that he was the first apprehended since Del Ponte said in December, “I know where Mladic is, and I know that Serbia can give me Mladic. But Karadžic – 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 , or in an apartment in Serbia .”

Despite the earlier pessimism of the ICTY, the last months have show cased new cooperation by the Serbian authorities and raised hope that the last two Serbian fugitives will quickly be caught and justice obtained for their victims.

- Caroline Patton

Labels: United Nations, U.N., MaximsNews

 

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