Serbian Warlord Transferred

Karadzic Extradited to The Hague

Suspected war criminal Radovan Karadzic was transferred to the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague early Wednesday - just hours after a Belgrade demonstration supporting him ended in violence


Story from SPIEGEL ONLINE
Published: July 30, 2008


Radovan Karadzic is in The Hague. Early on Wednesday morning, a white jet carrying the suspected war criminal landed at Rotterdam airport, and Karadzic was immediately transferred to Scheveningen detention center, the same prison which housed former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic during his war crimes trial.

"Radovan Karadzic was today transferred into the tribunal's custody, after having been at large for more than 13 years," the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said in a statement.

The former Bosnian-Serb leader stands accused of having masterminded the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica as well as helping organize the extended siege of Sarajevo, which ultimately resulted in some 10,000 deaths. The European Union had made the capture and extradition of Karadzic and Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic a pre-condition for Serbian EU accession talks. Mladic remains at large.

The exact timing of Karadzic's transfer to The Hague had been kept secret, and reporters set up camp outside the Scheveningen jail days ago in anticipation of his arrival. The suspected war criminal was arrested last week by Serbian authorities more than a decade after he was first indicted. Karadzic had been living under an assumed identity as an alternative medicine guru and had grown a thick, white beard to disguise his appearance.

Karadzic's extradition early Wednesday came just hours after thousands of ultra-nationalists marched in Belgrade in his support. Some 15,000 took the streets of the city center - far fewer than the 100,000 organizers had been hoping for - and chanted Karadzic's name at the bidding of Tomislav Nikolic, deputy head of the Serbian Radical Party. A number of the marchers carried signs accusing EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana of war crimes or images of Serbian President Boris Tadic wearing an Albanian hat - a reference to the recent secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

For the most part, though, the demonstration was far from the spirited demonstration of nationalist power Nikolic had been hoping for. By 10 p.m., most of those who turned out for the evening protest had gone home. When riot police tried to clear out those who remained, however, a pitched battle broke out, with demonstrators bombarding police with paving stones and police going after rioters with batons and tear gas. By the time the skirmish ended, 25 police and 25 demonstrators had been injured.

The Serbian government hopes that, with Karadzic now out of the country, tension with the country's nationalist minority will slowly be defused. In addition, Belgrade is hoping that, by showing its willingness to cooperate with the European Union and the war crimes tribunal, Brussels will bestow much-soughtafter trade benefits on Serbia.

Indeed, the new government of Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic, in office since the end of June, has made improving relations with the EU a priority and President Boris Tadic, re-elected in February of this year, is likewise in favor of fully integrating Serbia into the EU. Just last week, the government in Belgrade agreed to send ambassadors back to those European Union countries that had recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence in February.

Karadzic joins 37 other prisoners at The Hague from the Balkan wars fought in the early 1990s. His lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, said that Karadzic will not enter a plea at his first court appearance and that he will likely ask for a month to prepare his defense.


(Published: 10.08.2008.)