VARIOUS: Former U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke says "noose is tightening" around Mladic following arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic

Record ID: 479283

  • Title: VARIOUS: Former U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke says "noose is tightening" around Mladic following arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic
  • Date: 24th July 2008
  • Summary: (AM) NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA (JULY 23, 2008) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) AMBASSADOR RICHARD HOLBROOKE, DIPLOMAT, SAYING: "This is a great achievement, arresting Karadzic. Now, the next step is to transfer him to The Hague and let him become a part of the slow, but effectual war crimes tribunals. This is a big deal not only for Bosnia and Serbia and the Balkans, it's
  • Embargoed: 8th August 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVACYI2DUXPMBU5E2GENQ3XIKHO5
  • Story Text: The man who negotiated the peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia said on Wednesday (July 23) suspected war criminal Radovan Karadzic is "the worst of the worst".
    Speaking with Reuters, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke said it is extremely important for Karadzic to face a war crimes tribunal.

    "This is a great achievement arresting Karadzic. Now, the next step is to transfer him to The Hague and let him become a part of the slow, but effectual war crimes tribunals. This is a big deal not only for Bosnia and Serbia and the Balkans, it's also a big deal for the war crimes tribunal process," Holbrooke said.
    Ambassador Holbrooke was the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia.
    Karadzic was arrested in Serbia on Monday (July 21) after 11 years on the run. He had lived under an assumed name for years and worked as a doctor of alternative medicine. He wore thick glasses and grew a bushy beard and long hair, which he wore in a plaited topknot, to hide his well-known face.
    Karadzic was one of three remaining war crimes fugitives from the Yugoslav wars, their arrest a condition for Serbia to move towards European Union membership. But, some EU leaders have indicated Belgrade must go further to reap the full benefits, by arresting Karadzic's military chief Ratko Mladic, who is wanted on the same charges.
    Holbrooke said he was confident that Mladic will soon be captured.

    "I think the noose is now tightening dramatically around General Mladic," he said.
    Radovan Karadzic is twice indicted for genocide for the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica in 1995 and for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo.
    Some 11,000 people died in the city from sniper fire, mortar attacks, starvation and illness. Karadzic had wanted Serb areas of Bosnia to be linked to Serbia and other Serb-dominated areas at a time when Slobodan Milosevic was fanning nationalism in Serbia.
    He is now in a Belgrade prison awaiting extradition to The Hague, which could come this weekend.

    "This was the worst of the worst. Of the big three, in the evil trio in the Balkans, Milosovic, now dead, having died in a cell in The Hague, Mladic, still at large, and Karadzic. I always thought Karadzic was the worst because he was the intellectual, the psychiatrist, educated in New York, a poet as well, who went around preaching race hate. He was right out of the playbook of the Nazis," he added.
    Karadzic went underground in 1997 to evade the huge force of NATO peacekeepers that deployed in Bosnia at the end of the war, with part of their brief to find and arrest him.
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