Radovan Karadzic Arrested in Serbia for Genocide

Serbia arrested Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb political leader, and transferred him to The Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in response to enormous pressure from the European Union that Human Rights Watch played a leading role in marshalling. The EU insisted that Serbia could begin negotiations to join the union only upon the arrests of key fugitives, including Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander. Both men have been charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for their command responsibility for atrocities in the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s, including the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys after the fall of Srebrenica and the shelling of Sarajevo. To prevent Serbia from allying itself with Russia, many EU members had gradually sought to drop insistence on the arrest of the suspects. Human Rights Watch worked intensively with the EU, and the Dutch and Belgian governments held the line. When Serbia's pro-EU "Coalition for European Serbia" won parliamentary elections in June, the EU's principled stance paid off in Karadzic's arrest and surrender. We continue to press the EU to demand that Serbia arrest Mladic as well. Human Rights Watch played a key role in the establishment of the ICTY, and our investigations led directly to the indictment of several notorious suspects.