Radovan Karadži arrested after 13 years in hiding

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Former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadžić, was finally arrested yesterday and will stand trial at The Hague for crimes against humanity. Karadžić has been in hiding since 1995, and along with his military commander, Ratko Mladic, stands accused of genocide and crimes against humanity during the Balkans conflict (link).

Karadžić was one of the world's most wanted men, widely regarded as the central figure responsible for (and directly involved in) the murder of thousands of civilians (men, women and children) and other crimes against humanity including systematic rape, torture and imprisonment of civilians in concentration camps in Bosnia & Herzegovina during the Balkans conflict during the 1990's.

Karadžić was discovered to have been masquerading as a practitioner of alternative medicine, under the pseudonym of Dragan Dabic, and was even filmed recently (see pic on the right), showing just how convincing his disguise was... (pictured in the 1990's on the left)... it's almost beyond belief that a human being who personally ordered, planned, directed and even participated in the murder of so many innocent people, could live a completely different life as if nothing had ever happened... that thought alone is pretty frightening.

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Hopefully Karadžić's arrest and trial will bring some justice to those who died and to the countless people who were scarred, physically and mentally, from this horrible conflict which Karadžić oversaw with a Stalin-esque disregard for human life.

On a personal note, I hope my friend Milena is happy tonight. As a former student leader and protester against the Milosevic regime, she met and married her husband, the Times journalist Tom Walker. Both Tom and Milena became good friends of mine, since I worked with Milena and was also lucky enough to be their neighbour when I lived in the street next to theirs in London. Tom worked as a journalist in the Balkans during the conflict and was a fierce critic of Milosevic, Karadžić and their brutal regimes. Sadly, Tom died of cancer last year, but through the work of Tom and many others like him, the world got to learn the truth about these disgusting people. My hope is that Karadžić, unlike Milosevic, will live long enough to have justice served upon him...

More info on Karadžić is available here...
 
Although I'm barely old enough to remember the events in a fair amount of detail, it wasn't until one of my political science classes last year that I understood the complexity, brutality, and otherwise disgusting nature of this problem. I highly recommend Samantha Power's book A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide to anyone looking for a good read not just on the Balkans, but Vietnam, Burma, Korea, etc.

Hopefully he'll have the book thrown at him by the ICJ, as he does deserve it.
 
I think the man is summed up from this exchange with a BBC reporter:

Reporter: "Have you committed genocide?"
Karadzic: "I am president."

Vile man, I hope (belated) justice is served. I also hope Ratko Mladic is captured soon.
 
I think the man is summed up from this exchange with a BBC reporter:

Reporter: "Have you committed suicide?"
Karadzic: "I am president."

Vile man, I hope (belated) justice is served. I also hope Ratko Mladic is captured soon.

Are you sure you don't mean Genocide?

I would hope that a BBC reporter would notice if the interviewee had committed suicide!!!!


Scaff
 
This is quite astonishing...

http://dragandabic.com/

Now imagine Osama Bin Laden - responsible for far fewer civilian murders as Karadžić - turning up on his own website, living happily in the middle of the community... It staggers the mind! His email address was "healingwounds@dragandabic.com", bitterly ironic given his true identity...

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up... It would almost be funny if it wasn't for the fact that Karadžić didn't stand accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable - some examples are discussed in this article from today's Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/23/radovankaradzic.warcrimes

When the camp commander refused to let us inside the hangar to see the inmates' quarters, we started walking towards it. The commander, who was recently convicted by the war crimes court in Sarajevo, blocked the way while his henchmen slipped the safety catches of their guns. We protested that Karadzic had guaranteed that we could inspect the camp, to which the translator for the local Serbian authorities, Nada Balban, retorted: "[Karadzic] told us you can see this and this, but not that." When we tried again, we were bundled out of the camp.

We had seen very little, and only with time and trials at The Hague of lower-ranking Bosnian Serbs, did it become clear what Karadzic did not want us to see. Scenes of routine sadism such as that described by survivor Halid Mujkanovic, concerning a prisoner forced to perform fellatio on a fellow inmate, then ordered to bite off his testicles while a live pigeon was stuffed down his throat to stifle his screams as he died. The victim was Fikret Harambasic and the man was forced to castrate him in order to save the lives of his roommates, threatened with execution if there were no "volunteers". The crowd of guards who oversaw this entertainment "looked as though they were attending a sports match, supporting a team", said Mujkanovic.
 
I read a good book by Andy McNab which used these two monsters as part of the plot. Recoil I think it was. Didn't paint them in a particularly jolly light. Worth a quick read. Hope the scum rot in hell for the rest of their pitiful little lives.
 
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