They Got Karadzic -- But BUSH IS A WORSE WAR CRIMINAL! Will, Can,
The Hague Take Action?
Former Bosnian Serb "leader" Radovan Karadzic is charged with, among
other CRIMES, the mass slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the
city of Srebrenica during the so-called siege of Sarajevo.
BUT your WHITE HOUSE WAR CRIMINAL gave the order that led to at least
ONE MILLION DEATHS in IRAQ! Plus 4 million REFUGEES!
Surely, the world should demand punishment for what amounts to a
GENOCIDE. But will it?
The once "United" States has washed its collective hands.
---------------------------
"Life Laid Bare"
"The fugitive accused of genocide moved freely as a New Age healer"
By Peter Finn and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A10
BELGRADE, Serbia, July 22 -- Dragan Dabic, as he called himself,
lectured on spirituality, practiced alternative medicine and promised
on his Web site to vanquish afflictions ranging from impotence to
autism with his "energy healing treatment."
His graying hippie disguise -- the ponytail, the big grizzly beard,
the outsize spectacles -- was so good that Serbian secret police
running a surveillance operation at first found it difficult to fathom
who was in their sights. They were tracking suspected associates of
the war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic, according to a police
source, and had found their way to the strange New Age doctor.
On the run for more than a decade, Europe's most wanted man was
captured Monday, Serbian authorities announced. The unmasking of
Karadzic, 63, ended a manhunt for the Bosnian Serb leader whose name
will forever be linked with the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of
8,000 Muslim men and boys in the city of Srebrenica, their bodies
bulldozed into mass graves.
"He happily, freely walked around the city," Serbian war crimes
prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told reporters here Tuesday. "The people
who rented him the apartment did not know his true identity."
Goran Kojic, editor in chief of Belgrade's Healthy Life magazine, said
that Karadzic was a regular contributor to his publication and that he
likewise had no clue as to his true identity. Karadzic was trained in
prewar days as a psychiatrist, a background that appears to have
helped him fit into the world of alternative medicine.
On Tuesday, the magazine released photos of the healer, dressed in
black, attending a conference and glancing toward the camera with a
look that might suggest trepidation.
Karadzic's brother, Luka, who was allowed to see him Tuesday, said the
fugitive had been living in Belgrade for two or three years but had
been out of touch with family members for more than a decade. Karadzic
was so confident of his new identity that he reportedly was about to
embark on a vacation at a spa for 10 days when he was captured.
Karadzic's daughter, Sonja, told the Associated Press that other
family members wished to see him before his likely transfer to The
Hague in the Netherlands to face a U.N. war crimes tribunal on charges
of genocide, crimes against humanity and other offenses.
"We even suggested traveling under police escort to see him for at
least a few hours," she said. "For years, we have not seen our father,
husband and grandfather; my mother's health is not very good, and we
do not have the financial means necessary to travel to the
Netherlands."
Karadzic's family in Bosnia has been under a travel ban because of
suspicions that relatives had helped the fugitive evade capture.
On Tuesday evening, riot police patrolled central Belgrade, where a
small group of nationalist youths chanted Karadzic's name. There were
some minor incidents of violence, including scuffling with police and
the breaking of a few shop windows. The crowd quickly dispersed.
The arrest prompted celebration in parts of Bosnia, including
Sarajevo, where people poured into the streets after the news spread.
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.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072200125.html
--------------- [moreover] -----------------
"The Face of Evil"
By Richard Holbrooke
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A15
Standing with Slobodan Milosevic on the veranda of a government
hunting lodge outside Belgrade, I saw two men in the distance. They
got out of their twin Mercedeses and, in the fading light, started
toward us. I felt a jolt go through my body; they were unmistakable.
Ratko Mladic in combat fatigues, stocky, walking as though through a
muddy field; and Radovan Karadzic, taller, wearing a suit, with his
wild, but carefully coiffed, shock of white hair.
The capture of Karadzic on Monday took me back to a long night of
confrontation, drama and negotiations almost 13 years ago -- the only
time I ever met him. It was 5 p.m. on Sept. 13, 1995, the height of
the war in Bosnia. Finally, after years of weak Western and U.N.
response to Serb aggression and ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats
in Bosnia, U.S.-led NATO bombing had put the Serbs on the defensive.
Our small diplomatic negotiating team -- which included then-Lt. Gen.
Wesley K. Clark and Christopher Hill (now the senior U.S. envoy to
North Korea) -- was in Belgrade for the fifth time, trying to end a
war that had already taken the lives of nearly 300,000 people.
These three men -- Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic -- were the primary
reason for that war. Mladic and Karadzic had already been indicted as
war criminals by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
(Milosevic was not to be indicted until 1999.) As leaders of the
breakaway Bosnian Serb movement, they had met with many Western
luminaries, including Jimmy Carter.
But, in a change of strategy, the negotiating team had decided to
marginalize Karadzic and Mladic and to force Milosevic, as the senior
Serb in the region, to take responsibility for the war and the
negotiations we hoped would end it. Now Milosevic wanted to bring the
two men back into the discussions, probably to take some of the
pressure off himself.
We had anticipated this moment and agreed in advance that, while we
would never ask to meet with Karadzic and Mladic, if Milosevic offered
such a meeting, we would accept -- but only once, and only under
strict guidelines that would require Milosevic to be responsible for
their behavior.
I had told each member of our negotiating team to decide for himself
or herself whether to shake hands with the mass murderers. I hated
these men for what they had done. Their crimes included, indirectly,
the deaths of three of our colleagues -- Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel and
Nelson Drew, who had died when the armored personnel carrier they were
in plunged down a ravine as we attempted to reach Sarajevo by the only
route available, a dangerous dirt road that went through sniper-
filled, Serbian-controlled territory.
I did not shake hands, although both Karadzic and Mladic tried to.
Some of our team did; others did not. Mladic, not Karadzic, was the
dominant figure that evening. He engaged in staring contests with some
of our team as we sat across the table. Karadzic was silent at first.
He had a large face with heavy jowls, a soft chin and surprisingly
gentle eyes. Then, when he heard our demand that the siege of Sarajevo
be lifted immediately, he exploded. Rising from the table, the
American-educated Karadzic raged in passable English about the
"humiliations" his people were suffering. I reminded Milosevic that he
had promised that this sort of harangue would not occur. Karadzic
responded emotionally that he would call former president Carter, with
whom he said he was in touch, and started to leave the table. For the
only time that long night, I addressed Karadzic directly, telling him
that we worked only for President Bill Clinton and that he could call
President Carter if he wished but that we would leave and that the
bombing would intensify. Milosevic said something to Karadzic in
Serbian; he sat down again, and the meeting got down to business.
After 10 hours, we reached an agreement to lift the siege, after more
than three years of war. The next day, we finally were able to fly
into the reopened airfield in Sarajevo. The indomitable city was
already beginning to come back to life. Two months later the war would
end at Dayton, never to resume.
But while the Dayton agreement gave NATO the authority to capture
Karadzic and Mladic, an arrest didn't occur for nearly 13 years.
Finally, one of these dreadful murderers has begun the trip to The
Hague. It is imperative that Mladic follow Karadzic on this one-way
journey.
His capture is all the more important because it was accomplished by
Serbian authorities. Serbian President Boris Tadic deserves great
credit for this action, especially since his good friend Zoran
Djindjic, then prime minister of Serbia, was assassinated in 2003 as a
direct result of his courage in arresting Milosevic and sending him to
The Hague in 2001. Karadzic's arrest is no mere historical footnote;
it removes from the scene a man who was still undermining peace and
progress in the Balkans and whose enthusiastic advocacy of ethnic
cleansing merits a special place in history. It also moves Serbia
closer to European Union membership.
Karadzic's capture is another reminder of the value of war crimes
tribunals. Even though 12 years-plus is an inexcusably long time, the
war crimes indictment kept Karadzic on the run and prevented him from
resurfacing. In far-away Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-
Bashir, who was indicted last week by the International Criminal
Court, should be paying close attention.
(Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement,
writes a monthly column for The Post.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202593.html