Top war crimes suspect Karadzic arrested in Serbia

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-22 10:02

In the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo -- a focus of Bosnian Serb attacks during the war -- streets were jammed late Monday as Bosnian Muslims celebrated the arrest.

Luka Karadzic, a brother of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, speaks on a mobile phone in front of a special court in Belgrade, Serbia, July 22, 2008. Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres making him one of the world's top war crimes fugitives, was arrested on Monday evening in a sweep by Serbian security forces, the country's president and the UN tribunal said. [Agencies]

Srebrenica was one of the final chapters of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, which had broken out when ethnic Serbs revolted against a government dominated by Muslims and Croats that declared the republic independent from the disintegrating Serb-dominated Yugoslav foundation. Slovenia and Croatia already had broken away, the latter in another bloody ethnic conflict.

Serbia has been under increasing international pressure to find Karadzic and turn him over.

Still, his arrest came as a surprise to many. His whereabouts had been a mystery to UN war crimes prosecutors unlike those of Mladic, who had last been spotted living in Belgrade in 2005 and remains at large.

"He was at large because the Yugoslav army was protecting him. But this guy in my view was worse than Milosevic," Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador who negotiated an end to the Bosnian War, told CNN. "He was the intellectual leader."

Holbrooke calculated the Karadzic is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of 300,000 people, because without him there would have been no war or genocide.

The charges against him, last amended in May 2000, include genocide, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, and other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war.

"These offenses include a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing directed at non-Serbs, organized attacks on places of worship, the operation of concentration camps, and the mass murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians," the White House statement added.

As leader of Bosnia's Serbs, Karadzic hobnobbed with international negotiators and his interviews were top news items during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war, set off when a government dominated by Slavic Muslims and Croats declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992.

But his life changed by the time the war ended in late 1995 with an estimated 250,000 people dead and another 1.8 million driven from their homes. He was indicted twice by the UN tribunal on genocide charges stemming from his alleged crimes against Bosnia's Muslims and Croats.

Karadzic's reported hide-outs included Serbian Orthodox monasteries and refurbished mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. Some newspaper reports said he had at times disguised himself as a priest by shaving off his trademark silver mane and donning a brown cassock.

The fugitive's wife, Ljiljana, said from her home in Karadzic's former stronghold, Pale, near Sarajevo that her daughter Sonja had called her before midnight.

"As the phone rang, I knew something was wrong. I'm shocked. Confused. At least now, we know he is alive," Ljiljana Karadzic said, declining further comment.

The European Union said the arrest "illustrates the commitment of the new Belgrade government to contributing to peace and stability in the Balkans region."

A statement from the EU presidency, currently held by France, said the arrest was "an important step on the path to the rapprochement of Serbia with the European Union."

On Saturday, Serb authorities turned over an ex-Bosnian Serb police chief, Stojan Zupljanin, who was arrested in the town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run. A Belgrade court on Friday rejected his appeal against extradition and Zupljanin pleaded innocent Monday to 12 charges of murder, torture and persecution of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in 1992.

Zupljanin was charged with war crimes for allegedly overseeing Serb-run prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

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