Karadzic arrest 'expected today'

The chief UN war crimes prosecutor for former Yugoslavia said she expected one of the most wanted figures from the Balkan wars, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to be arrested today.

Carla del Ponte refused to disclose the basis for her optimism that Karadzic, who has been in hiding for nearly a decade, would be taken into custody by the end of the month.

“I’m still thinking that somebody is looking for Karadzic very hard, and that he will be arrested very soon,” she said. “Of course I have (information). But you all understand that I cannot tell it now publicly. Let’s obtain the arrest of Karadzic and after we will speak about what we have done.”

Del Ponte was responding to a question about a report that she felt Karadzic would be handed over to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, this month. When a reporter noted that June ends on Wednesday, she replied: ”I’m still expecting (it), yes. But let’s see.”

The chief prosecutor spoke to reporters after telling the UN Security Council it was unacceptable that Karadzic and his military chief, General Ratko Mladic, were still fugitives nearly 10 years after the Dayton peace agreement was signed ending the war in Bosnia.

Karadzic was the political leader of Bosnia’s Serbs during the ethnic war that claimed 200,000 lives and left 1.8 million people homeless.

He is accused of having masterminded Bosnia’s 1992-95 war with former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, who is being tried at The Hague for genocide.

Karadzic and Mladic were indicted in 1995 by the UN tribunal on charges of genocide for their alleged roles in atrocities that included the Bosnian Serb massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.

“How long will it be tolerated that these leaders escape justice?” del Ponte said. “How long will it be tolerated that they make a parody of both justice and the repeated commitment of the Security Council to have them arrested and tried?”

The Nato-led peacekeepers deployed in Bosnia have a standing order to arrest Karadzic, but dozens of raids have been unsuccessful.