By Colin Soloway
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, April 9, 1998; Page A27

SARAJEVO, Bosnia, April 8—British special forces today arrested two Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects wanted for alleged atrocities at the Omarska concentration camp, and they were transported immediately to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

The men were identified as Miroslav Kvocka and Mladen Radic, who were indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, the Dutch capital, for their alleged roles in running the Omarska camp outside the northwestern Bosnian town of Prijedor, where hundreds of Muslims and Croats were killed in the spring and summer of 1992.

The two men stand accused of participating in some of the most horrific human rights abuses of the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict. As commander of the Omarska camp during its first month of operation and later as a deputy commander, Kvocka, 41, was allegedly aware of various crimes against humanity committed by its guards, including repeated beatings and rapes, torture, and the murders of Muslim and Croat inmates.

As a subordinate to Kvocka, Radic, 45, commanded the guard force working one of three shifts at the camp. He was specifically charged with dragging a woman interned at the camp in June and July 1992 -- identified in the indictment only as "A" -- from her cell and raping her over an extended period.

The arrest took place late this afternoon in the British-administered sector of Bosnia. Diplomatic sources in Washington said the operation was carried out by a relatively small detachment of British SAS troops, a secretive group with special counterterrorism training. Both men were arrested in Prijedor without incident, the sources said, and they were swiftly taken by car to a NATO plane that transported them to the Hague. Radic was armed with a pistol but did not use it, the sources said.

No U.S. troops were involved, although the operation was approved by U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the top NATO military commander, following extended reconnaissance, a lengthy review, and detailed preparations, including special training. The region where the operation was conducted until recently was a bastion of hard-line Serbs who resented NATO's presence in Bosnia. Since January it has come under tighter control by a more moderate Bosnian Serb government elected in Banja Luka.

NATO officials have said the new government has improved the political climate for undertaking such operations in areas populated by Serbs, and U.S., British and NATO officials today stressed their commitment to detaining additional indictees.

They also seized the occasion to issue a fresh warning to Radovan Karadzic, a former leader of the Bosnian Serbs indicted for his alleged role in the 1995 massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica, who has long been protected in his hometown of Pale by heavily armed forces.

"He has no place to run and no place to hide," State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said of Karadzic. "It's time he realized that . . . the noose is gradually tightening around his neck."

Capt. Louis Garneau, a spokesman for the NATO-led Bosnian peacekeeping force here, said there were no injuries to NATO troops in today's operation. Reading from a NATO statement, Garneau said the indictees surrendered "when it was clear that their freedom of movement and attempts to evade were at an end."

The operation was the fourth against Bosnia's war crimes suspects by NATO-member forces since last July, when British special forces arrested one suspect in Prijedor and killed another who opened fire while resisting arrest. Since then, Dutch and American troops have captured two Croatian suspects and one Serbian suspect.

Seventy-four Serbs, Croats and Muslims have been publicly indicted by the international tribunal. Kvocka and Radic's arrests bring the number in detention to 25. Two have been convicted and are currently serving their sentences. Others have been indicted but not named.

The Omarska camp was created by the Serbs in May 1992 on the outskirts of Prijedor to hold, interrogate and punish Muslims and Croats who had fled intensive shelling of the town before it succumbed to Serb forces. Many of the city's political and intellectual elite were confined there in unspeakable conditions, with starvation diets and no provisions for personal hygiene.

Despite their alleged role in the operation of the camp, the men arrested today were described in 1996 by the Boston Globe as having been employed for a time by the Prijedor police force under the command of another indicted war crimes suspect, Zeljko Meakic, who remains at large. But no NATO operation was attempted then, and Serbian police and interior ministry officials also refused to take action.

Staff writer R. Jeffrey Smith in Washington contributed to this report.