Serbian war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic arrested

Radovan Karadzic, one of the most notorious war crimes suspects to emerge from the Balkan Wars and a fugitive for more than a decade, was captured today by Serbian security forces, officials said.

Indicted on multiple charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, Karadzic for years eluded NATO forces and myriad investigators seeking to bring to justice the man who served as president of the self-declared Bosnian Serb republic and who came to symbolize a brutal campaign of repression against Bosnian Muslims.

Karadzic, now 63, is accused of overseeing the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, the single biggest atrocity in post-World War II Europe.

The regime he led is accused of enacting a policy that came to be known as ethnic cleansing – driving Muslim civilians from their homes, torching the land, killing those who resisted. Tens of thousands of people died.

He was indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal at The Hague in 1995, as the three-year Bosnian war came to an end, and quickly dropped from public sight. With his arrest, he will probably be dispatched to the court in the Netherlands within days.

Serbia gave protection to Karadzic while the war’s mastermind, Slobodan Milosevic, ruled. But it has been moving steadily closer to the West and has been under pressure to cooperate with the tribunal in The Hague. It was the office of Serbia’s pro-West president, Boris Tadic, that announced Karadzic’s arrest.

“We all thought this was impossible,” Natasa Kandic, a prominent human rights activist, said when the news was announced.

 wilkinson@latimes.com

Special correspondent Cirjakovic reported from Belgrade and Times staff writer Wilkinson reported from Rome.