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A Life Laid Bare
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On Tuesday, a Serbian judge ordered Karadzic's transfer to The Hague to face the war crimes charges. Karadzic has three days to appeal his extradition. A final ruling on the appeal could come almost immediately after it is filed, officials here said -- a rejection would clear the way for him to be put on an airplane to The Hague immediately.
One of his attorneys said he will delay filing his appeal until Friday to slow down the transfer.
Officials provided few details about Karadzic's capture, saying that doing so could jeopardize future operations. Karadzic's former military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, remains at large, but "we are absolutely determined to finish this job," said Rasim Ljajic, head of Serbia's National Council for Cooperation with The Hague tribunal.
According to some reports, Karadzic had been under surveillance for some time following a tip from a foreign intelligence service. But Ljajic said Serbian security services found Karadzic while searching for other suspects.
"He was interrogated during the night. His identity was confirmed, and he was handed the indictment," prosecutor Vukcevic said. "He is defending himself mainly with silence."
Authorities reported that the arrest took place Monday night, but Karadzic's attorney said Tuesday that his client insists he was seized on Friday and held incommunicado over the weekend.
A quarter of a million people were killed in the Balkan wars, many of them civilians, as ancient ethnic hostilities erupted anew. Bosnian Serb forces, backed by the Yugoslav leadership in Belgrade, attempted to "ethnically cleanse" large parts of the former Yugoslav republic of Muslims and Croats to create a Greater Serbia. Military intervention by the NATO alliance, followed by a peace conference in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, ended the war. Karadzic went into hiding in 1997 after NATO began to hunt for politicians and combatants charged by the war crimes tribunal.
Karadzic was widely believed to be hiding in the Serb-dominated areas of Bosnia, sometimes disguised as an Orthodox priest and moving between monasteries and other hideouts. He repeatedly eluded peacekeeping troops who staged numerous raids in Serb enclaves in eastern Bosnia.
Olga Kavran, a spokeswoman for lead war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz, said officials at The Hague had no details about when Karadzic would arrive.
When he does, Kavran said, he will make an initial court appearance, where he will be offered the chance to enter a plea. After that, he will be held in a prison cell during a pretrial period that will last at least several months. During that time, Kavran said, prosecutors will disclose evidence to Karadzic's attorneys.
She said his trial will be heard by a panel of three judges. If convicted, he would face life in prison; the tribunal has no death penalty. Kavran said Karadzic will be held in a cell with no special conditions and "treated like any other detainee."
"It's a huge day," said Nerma Jelacic, another spokeswoman for the tribunal. "People were writing us off."
Jelacic said that although the tribunal has indicted 161 people since it began operations, critics have unfairly dismissed it as ineffective because it had failed to bring high-profile fugitives such as Karadzic and Mladic to justice.
"It would be wrong to judge this tribunal only on the basis of this one accused," she said. "This is an important milestone for the tribunal and for international justice as a whole. This shows that the passage of time will not stand for impunity. Those responsible will be found and brought to justice."
The arrest also signaled the commitment of a new, pro-Western government in Belgrade to confront the past and accelerate the country's movement toward membership in the European Union, which had stalled over concerns by E.U. officials that previous Serbian governments were not committed to bringing war crimes suspects to justice.
"We have waited for this for 13 years. Finally. Finally," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in Brussels. "This is a very good thing for the rapprochement of Serbia with the European Union."
Sullivan reported from The Hague.
