Justice is served.
Ratko Mladic Arrested in Serbia - The Killer of Bosnian Muslims
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304520804576346960916648594.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
ISTANBUL—Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of genocide for the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 unarmed Muslim men at Srebrenica, was captured in Serbia Thursday after a decade and a half on the run as one of the world’s most wanted war criminals.
Serbian President Boris Tadic, announcing the arrest at a news conference, described the general’s capture as “good for Serbia” and said it would open the doors for his country to start talks on joining the European Union.
I think today we finished a difficult period in our recent history. We clear our name and the name of all Serbs, wherever they are," Mr. Tadic said.
Massacre at Srebrenica
A look back
Reuters
Gen. Mladic’s extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague was under way, President Tadic said. He declined, however, to give details about how Gen. Mladic was found and arrested after so many years in hiding.
Gen. Mladic was the last major figure accused of war crimes in the 1992-1995 Yugoslav wars to continue evading capture. Leaders from the EU, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and from around the world welcomed his arrest Thursday. “Today we have seen an important step towards a Europe that is whole, free and at peace,” said NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
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2008: Serbia Arrests Former Bosnian Serb Leader Karadzic
Mladic documents from the Hague Justice Portal
British Foreign Secretary William Hague congratulated Serbian authorities on the arrest. “Today should mark the beginning of a new chapter for the countries of western Balkans,” Mr. Hague said.
Indeed, of the 161 people that the Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague indicted for war crimes, only one—Goran Hadjic, the wartime leader of Serbs in Croatia—remains at large.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A picture taken on Aug. 10, 1993, shows the commander of Serbian forces in Bosnia General Ratko Mladic, center, arriving at Sarajevo airport.
To many Bosnian Muslims, Gen. Mladic was the greatest monster of the war, the man they believe personally directed the separation and execution thousands of men and boys in Srebrenica, a United Nation’s protected enclave in Bosnia, over a few days in 1995.
The tribunal’s indictment accuses the 69 year-old former general of responsibility for the siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital; taking United Nations hostages; and conducting the deliberate ethnic cleansing of Bosnian territory, including at Srebrenica.
The timing of the arrest triggered debate over whether Serbia’s government had known where Gen. Mladic was hiding. The EU is currently reassessing Serbia’s membership bid, which was dependent on The Hague tribunal declaring that Serbia was fully cooperating with it’s efforts to bring Gen. Mladic and other alleged war criminals to justice. The tribunal’s prosecutor had just issued a report criticizing Serbia’s cooperation.
President Tadic repeatedly denied that Serbia’s government had “calculated” the arrest to help its EU membership bid, in response to reporters’ questions Thursday. He said his government had cooperated to the fullest. “I can tell you all his criticism is not true anymore,” Mr. Tadic said of the Hague prosecutor’s report.
According to Serbia news reports, Gen. Mladic was found living in a village in Northern Serbia and wasn’t disguised. He was arrested early in the morning and didn’t resist.
Mr. Mladic was a war hero to Serbian nationalists, but many—especially younger Serbs—quietly welcomed his capture Thursday, since it would allow the country to move beyond the war and toward EU membership, at a time when Serbia’s economy has been hard hit. The Belgrade stock market rose 3% on news of the arrest, before selling off half those gains.
Unlike in 2008, when Radovan Karadjic, the wartime Bosnian Serb president, was arrested in Belgrade, there were no signs of street protests against Gen. Mladic’s extradition Thursday. According to an eyewitness, riot police were stationed outside the main government building in central Belgrade.
The arrest also comes at a moment when political tensions in Bosnia Herzegovina between Serbs, Muslims and Croats, have rarely been higher since the war ended 16 years ago.
—Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.
Write to Marc Champion at [email protected]