(July 2008)
I’ve got a simple question, and it's this: Why in hell did it take so long?
You’ll know from the newspapers that the authorities have finally caught up with that scumbag mass-murderering thug Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who orchestrated the deaths of many thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He was finally apprehended yesterday and taken to face the war crimes court in Belgrade.
His crimes include presiding over the 43-month siege of Sarajevo when more than 10,000 civilians fell to either shelling or sniping from his forces, camped high above the city, and also for his involvement in orchestrating the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.
But there’s much more, and Karadzic has also been charged with genocide, extermination, murder, wilful killing, deportation, inhumane acts, and other crimes against Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina – so he can claim a position right up there (or down there) with Adolf Hitler.
He had been on the run for no fewer than 13 years, and although his actions have been compared to the worst atrocities of Nazi Germany during the 2nd World War, NATO forces have never been able to get to him. It was left to the Serbian security forces, under instruction from new President, Boris Tadic, to do the deed.
And that’s because he was being protected by high-ups in the Bosnian Serb military, by Bosnian Serb politicians and – hypocritically – by the Serbian Orthodox Church, who allowed him to hide in their monasteries - so all of those people deserve the condemnation of the rest of the world.
If it hadn’t been for Serbia wanting to join the European Union, and needing to finally give up Karadzic or else be prevented from joining, perhaps this man would still be running around as free as a bird.
Now, however, the Serbs have got to pick up Karadzic’s boss and sidekick, Ratko Mladic (known as 'The Butcher of Bosnia') and perhaps some justice in that part of the world might finally be served … and then Serbia might be able to regain some respectability and perhaps achieve its goal of membership of the European Union.
UPDATES: ** Karadzic weas sentenced to life imprisonment and is currently serving his sentence in a British prison.
** Serbia officially applied for European Union membership on 22nd December 2009. Accession negotiations are currently ongoing. Serbia is expected to complete its negotiations by the end of 2023, allowing it to join the Union by 2025.
** In July 1995 Mladic was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for war crimes. He is serving a life sentence in a prison in The Hague.