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Top war crimes suspect Karadzic arrested in Serbia

18 hours ago

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a war crimes fugitive and one of the world’s most wanted men, was arrested on Monday evening in a sweep by Serbian security forces, the country’s president said.

Karadzic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia for genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He has been hiding since 1998.

President Boris Tadic’s office said in a statement that Karadzic was arrested “in an action by the Serbian security services.”

Karadzic, who was the leader of ethnic Serbs during the war that erupted with Bosnia’s secession from Yugoslavia, is accused of masterminding massacres that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as “scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.”

He had topped the tribunal’s most-wanted list for more than a decade and was said to have resorted to elaborate disguises to elude authorities.

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.