Notwithstanding that every Serb I know believes that Dr. Radovan Karadzic was hiding in plain sight, reports are that a tip from a foreign intelligence agency finally enabled Serbian security officers to arrest him yesterday.
Indeed, it is a testament to either the incompetence or perfidy of Serbian (and UN) authorities that Karadzic managed to evade capture over the past 13 years. After all, he was second only to Osama bin Laden on the world’s most-wanted list.
Radovan Karadzic was located and arrested tonight. Karadzic was brought to the investigative judge of the War Crimes Court in Belgrade, in accordance with the law on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [ICTY].
[Official statement from the office of Serbian President Boris Tadic]
Karadzic, seen here (to the right) in an old photo with fellow Serbian fugitive, commander Ratko Mladic, was indicted by the ICTY on a battery of crimes against humanity. In fact, the UN claims that he and Mladic:
Killed at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995 as part of a campaign to ‘terrorise and demoralise the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat population’.
Even more damning, however, the US and EU claim that they Killed over 100,000 (and displaced 2 million more) pursuant to their genocidal plan to ethnically cleanse Sarajevo of all non-Serbs.
Meanwhile, his flight from justice highlighted Serbia’s quixotic fight to retain control over Kosovo whilst begging the US for foreign aid and the EU for membership. Because the US and EU insisted that Serbia arresting Karadzic and Mladic was an absolute precondition in each case. Never mind that the US proved rather malleable in this respect:
…despite declaring in January of this year that Belgrade was not cooperating fully with the ICTY, Washington made quite a fuss last week about that $10 million disbursement…. This comes after a similar declaration last year that Belgrade was failing to cooperate which, nonetheless, was also followed in short order by $73.6 million in disbursements – albeit, ostensibly, ‘in assistance to organisations and programmes outside of the central government’ in Belgrade.
Of course, Washington’s quagmire in Iraq and its feckless hunt for Osama bin Laden provide the only explanation for Belgrade’s apparent leverage in this respect.
[Serbs confound Americans as they hide war criminals and seek US aid, The iPINIONS Journal, June 15, 2005]
Yet the Serbian government deserves credit for arresting Karadzic – who officials claim was working in a medical clinic under a false name and had grown a white beard to conceal his identity.
After all, he and Mladic have become veritable folk heroes in Serbia. And, it is impossible to exaggerate the jingoistic pressure Serbian authorities have been under to harbor these fugitives indefinitely.
Now if only some foreign intelligence agency will tell them which Serbian Orthodox monastery is providing Mladic sanctuary….
Related Articles:
Serbs confound Americans…
Mladic eludes capture…again
Serbs lose fight for Kosovo
My Serbian vacation
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