Most-wanted Karadzic held after 13-yr hunt

Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, hailed the arrest as an important step in bringing to justice the architect of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. He said Karadzic, 63, the Bosnian Serb President during the war there between 1992 and 1995, would be transferred to The Hague in “due course.”

“This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade,” Brammertz said. “It is also an important day 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.”

Karadzic’s place of arrest was not announced, but Serbian Government officials said Karadzic had been arrested by the Serbian secret police not far from Belgrade. Officials from President Boris Tadic’s office said Karadzic had appeared before an investigative judge at Serbia’s war crimes court, a prerequisite for his extradition to the Hague.

Hague and EU officials have long suspected that he was hiding in Serbia, and have pressed Belgrade to hand him over. The failure to arrest Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the still-fugitive Bosnian Serb general also indicted on war crimes, long stood as a block to greater Serbian ties to the European Union after the wars in Bosnia and later Kosovo.

Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the agreements in Dayton, Ohio, to end the war in Bosnia in 1995 said: “Of the three most evil men of the Balkans, Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic, I thought Karadzic was the worst. The reason was that Karadzic was a real racist believer. Karadzic really enjoyed ordering the killing of Muslims whereas Milosevic was an opportunist.”

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