PARIS — Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in Serbia that ended a 13-year hunt.
Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, hailed the arrest as an important step in bringing to justice one of the architects of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. He said Mr. Karadzic, 63, the Bosnian Serb president during the war there between 1992 and 1995, would be transferred to The Hague in “due course.”
“This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade,” Mr. Brammertz said. “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.”
Mr. Karadzic’s exact place of arrest was not announced, but Serbian government officials said he was arrested by the Serbian secret police not far from Belgrade, the capital. Officials from President Boris Tadic’s office said Mr. Karadzic had appeared before an investigative judge at Serbia’s war crimes court, a prerequisite for his extradition to The Hague.
Mr. Karadzic, a nationalist hero among Serbian radicals and one of the tribunal’s most wanted criminals for more than a decade, is said to have eluded arrest so long by shaving his swoopy gray hair and disguising himself as a Serbian Orthodox priest. He reportedly hid out in caves in the mountains of eastern Bosnia and in monasteries. Before his political career, he was a medical doctor who worked as a psychiatrist in Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital.
Prosecutors in The Hague and officials of the European Union have long suspected that he was, in fact, hiding in Serbia, and in recent years have pressed officials in Belgrade to hand him over. The failure to arrest Mr. Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the still fugitive Bosnian Serb general also indicted on war crimes, has stood as a block to greater Serbian ties to the European Union after the wars in Bosnia and later Kosovo.
“This is a historic event,” said Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the agreements in Dayton, Ohio, to end the war in Bosnia in 1995. “Of the three most evil men of the Balkans, Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, I thought Karadzic was the worst. The reason was that Karadzic was a real racist believer. Karadzic really enjoyed ordering the killing of Muslims, whereas Milosevic was an opportunist.”
Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia allied with Mr. Karadzic and Mr. Mladic, was arrested in 2001 and put on trial for war crimes in 2002. He died there in 2006 before a verdict was reached.
Mr. Holbrooke said that despite Mr. Karadzic’s arrest, Serbia’s responsibility was not over. “They have to capture Mladic,” he said.
On Monday night after the arrest, armed police officers were deployed near the war crimes court in Belgrade, where about 50 nationalist supporters of Mr. Karadzic gathered, waving Serbian flags and chanting, “Save Serbia, and kill yourself Mr. Tadic.” Several protesters were arrested after attacking journalists. Mr. Karadzic’s brother, Luka, was also seen arriving at the courthouse.
Serbian officials said the police were also dispatched to protect the United States Embassy, which was set ablaze in February by a mob protesting Kosovo’s declaration of independence.
The arrest, more than a decade after Mr. Karadzic went into hiding, culminated a long and protracted effort by the West to press Serbia to arrest Mr. Karadzic for the massacres in the southeastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, in the most heinous crime committed during the Balkan wars.
The arrest was just weeks after a new pro-Western coalition government in Serbia was formed whose overriding goal is to bring Serbia into the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc. The European Union has made delivering indicted war criminals to The Hague a precondition for Serbia’s membership.
The arrest was hailed by Western diplomats as proof of Serbia’s determination to link its future to the West and put the virulent nationalism of the past behind it. The capture under the stewardship of the new government has particular resonance because the government is made up of an unlikely alliance between the Democrats of Mr. Tadic and the Socialist Party of Mr. Milosevic, which fought a war against the West in the 1990s, but has now vowed to bring Serbia back into the Western fold.
In a sign that the move would accelerate Serbia’s path to the European Union, the bloc’s official in charge of expansion, Olli Rehn, said Monday that Mr. Karadzic’s arrest was a “milestone” that would help clear the way for the poor Balkan nation to join.
“It proves the determination of the new government to achieve full cooperation with the tribunal,” he said. He said he and European Union foreign ministers would meet with Serbia’s foreign minister, Vuk Jeremic, in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss accelerated ties with Serbia.
The White House said the arrest was “an important demonstration of the Serbian government’s determination to honor its commitment to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” It said, “There is no better tribute to the victims of the war’s atrocities than bringing their perpetrators to justice.”
The United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague indicted the former leader on July 24, 1995, just days after thousands of unarmed Bosnian men were executed in and around Srebrenica, a United Nations-protected enclave that was overrun by the Bosnian Serb military and the police. Their forces were assisted closely by Serbian troops sent by Belgrade.
The prosecution charged him with genocide, persecution, deportation and other crimes committed against non-Serb civilians in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.
He was indicted together with his chief military commander, Mr. Mladic, who is also believed to be in Serbia.
Natasha Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, a leading human rights advocate, said by telephone from her home moments after hearing the news: “I’m still in shock. This is historic news. Nobody believed anymore this would be possible. I was sure Karadzic was under the protection of the church.”
Ms. Kandic said she had been in touch with friends in Sarajevo, in Bosnia, who were still incredulous after hearing arrest rumors for so many years. “They are saying they cannot and dare not believe it,” she said. “Finally the victims can be satisfied.”
Mr. Karadzic’s wife, Ljiljana, told The Associated Press by phone from her home near Sarajevo that she had been alerted about the arrest by her daughter Sonja, who called her before midnight. “As the phone rang, I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I’m shocked. Confused. At least now, we know he is alive.”
Even though indicted by the United Nations tribunal, he was often seen in and around Pale, his stronghold in Bosnia, but vanished from view after 1997. Until then, NATO troops stationed in the area often had the chance to arrest him but claimed that they had no arrest orders, despite the international warrant issued against him.
Later, when NATO began to look for him in earnest, he moved around the mountainous regions of Bosnia and in neighboring Montenegro, where he was born. Although the United States and others offered rewards for information leading to his capture, Mr. Karadzic seemed protected by his status as a Serbian hero.
He is charged with genocide for the murder of close to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.
The indictment charges that Mr. Karadzic also committed genocide, persecutions and other crimes when forces under his command killed non-Serbs during and after attacks on towns throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, rounded up thousands of non-Serbs and transferred them to camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities.
The charges state that forces under Mr. Karadzic’s command killed, tortured, mistreated and sexually assaulted non-Serbs in these camps.
Further, he is charged with responsibility for the shelling and sniping of civilians in Sarajevo, during the 43-month siege of the city, which led to the killing and wounding of thousands, including many women and children.
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