uhapsen radovan karadzic genocide by the war-crimes tribunal arrested after 13 years on the run
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused of genocide by the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, was arrested Monday, bringing an end to a nearly 13-year search for a man wanted for his part in the massacre of thousands of civilians.
Political leaders in Europe and the US have congratulated the Serbian government on managing to detain Radovan Karadzic after 13 years on the run.
Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat who brokered the Dayton Peace Agreement for Bosnia in 1995, described his arrest as “a historic day”.
He said: “One of the worst men in the world, the Osama bin Laden of Europe, has finally been captured.
Serbian government sources said he had been under surveillance for several weeks after a tip from a foreign intelligence service.
“Radovan Karadzic was located and arrested,” the government said in a statement, which gave few details. It’s believed he was captured in Belgrade and is undergoing formal identification, including DNA testing.
Karadzic was arrested late on Monday night in Belgrade by the Serbian security services, the office of Serb president Boris Tadic said.
The 63-year-old former war leader is accused of orchestrating the worst acts of brutality Europe has seen since the Nazi campaigns of the Second World War.
Some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed in and around the town of Srebrenica in 1995, while more than 10,000 others died during the Serb siege of Bosnian capital Sarajevo.
