BELGRADE, Serbia — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres making him one of the world's top war crimes fugitives, was arrested on Monday evening in a sweep by Serbian security forces, the country's president and the U.N. tribunal said.
Karadzic is suspected of masterminding mass killings that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history." The killings include the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe's worst slaughter since World War II.
"I was informed by our colleagues in Belgrade about the successful operation which resulted in the arrest of Radovan Karadzic," the tribunal's head prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said.
He was indicted on genocide charges in 1995 by the tribunal, and topped the its most-wanted list for more than a decade, allegedly resorting to elaborate disguises to elude authorities.
Serbia has been under heavy pressure from the European Union to turn over suspects to the international tribunal.
He was charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, wilful killing, persecutions, deportation, inhumane acts, and other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 war.
His indictment accuses Karadzic, acting together with others, committed the crimes to secure control of areas of Bosnia which had been proclaimed part of the "Serbian Republic" and significantly reducing its non-Serb population.
If Karadzic is extradited to the tribunal in The Hague, he would be the 44th Serb suspect extradited to the tribunal. The others include former President Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted in 2000 and died in 2006 while on trial on war crimes charges.
"This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade. It is also an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice," Brammertz said.
On Saturday, Serb authorities turned over an ex-Bosnian Serb police chief, Stojan Zupljanin, who was arrested in the town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run. A Belgrade court on Friday rejected his appeal against extradition and Zupljanin pleaded innocent Monday to 12 charges of murder, torture and persecution of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in 1992.
Zupljanin was charged with war crimes for allegedly overseeing Serb-run prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.
Karadzic's reported hide-outs included Serbian Orthodox monasteries and refurbished mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. Some newspaper reports said he had at times disguised himself as a priest by shaving off his trademark silver mane and donning a brown cassock.
As leader of Bosnia's Serbs, Karadzic hobnobbed with international negotiators and his interviews were top news items during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war, set off when a government dominated by Slavic Muslims and Croats declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992.
But his life changed by the time the war ended in late 1995 with an estimated 250,000 people dead and another 1.8 million driven from their homes. He was indicted twice by the U.N. tribunal on genocide charges stemming from his alleged crimes against Bosnia's Muslims and Croats.
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