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BELGRADE: Serbia said its security forces had captured Radovan Karadzic, the mastermind of the genocidal Srebrenica massacre who had been on the run for nearly 13 years.
Karadzic, 63 - described as the "Osama Bin Laden of Europe" - had been "located and arrested tonight," said a statement Monday from the office of Serbian President Boris Tadic.
"Karadzic was brought to the investigative judge of the War Crimes Court in Belgrade, in accordance with the law on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)," it added.
The presidency and prosecutors refrained from disclosing any more details about the operation, but a war crimes official who requested anonymity said Karadzic appeared "depressive" and offered "no resistance" when arrested on Serbian territory.
The capture of Karadzic comes two weeks after Serbia got a new pro-European Union membership government dominated by Tadic's pro-Western Democratic Party, with the support of the reformed Socialists of late president Slobodan Milosevic.
Along with his former army chief Ratko Mladic, Karadzic had evaded the ICTY since 1995 when they were charged with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
Mladic, 65, is now one of only two other remaining fugitives of The Hague-based court. The other is Goran Hadzic, 49, a former Serb politician wanted for "ethnic cleansing," but in Croatia.
Karadzic's arrest was promptly welcomed by the United States, the European Union, and the UN war crimes court, as well as an association of mothers of those killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
UN war crimes chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz, who cancelled a planned trip to Belgrade Tuesday after the arrest, praised the government in Serbia, whose cooperation with the UN court is the main obstacle to the Balkan country's EU integration.
"I was informed by our colleagues in Belgrade about the successful operation which resulted in the arrest of Radovan Karadzic. I would like to congratulate the Serbian authorities... on achieving this milestone," the prosecutor said in a statement.
A White House statement also congratulated Belgrade and noted the poignant timing of its achievement.
"The timing of the arrest, only days after the commemoration of the massacre of over 7,000 Bosnians committed in Srebrenica, is particularly appropriate, as there is no better tribute to the victims of the war's atrocities than bringing their perpetrators to justice."
One of the top war crimes suspects in the Balkans, Karadzic is seen widely as a murderous megalomaniac with a twisted view of history and his supposed destiny as a leader of the Bosnian Serbs.
Bosnian Croats and Muslims, against whom Karadzic waged a barbaric campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in the early 1990s, have no doubt that he is one of the monsters of the 20th century.
Kada Hotic, who lost her son and husband as Serb troops overran the wartime Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica before summarily killing some thousands of Muslim men and boys, expressed relief at Karadzic's arrest.
"Justice has finally been done. Tonight's event showed that a war criminal cannot hide forever," Hotic said, as several dozen Muslims celebrated the news in a main square of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.
"A major thug has been removed from the scene," former US envoy to the Balkans Richard Holbrooke said, describing Karadzic as the "Osama Bin Laden of Europe."
But for some Serbs he remains a hero of the 1992-1995 war which followed Bosnia's independence from the Yugoslav federation, a man who stood up to age-old enemies and great powers and carved out a separate Serb homeland.
Some 50 ultra-nationalists gathered early Tuesday in front of Belgrade's war crimes court to protest his arrest. The situation was "calm," B92 television reported, as the demonstrators were surrounded by four times as many police.
The worst crimes on his indictment are the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo , in which some 10,000 civilians were killed, and the massacre in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995.
In the bitter war against Bosnia's Muslim-led government, he is said to have authorised "ethnic cleansing" in which more than a million non-Serbs were driven from their homes in villages where they had lived for generations.
The expulsions were accompanied, according to international observers, by widespread killings and up to 20,000 rapes in a calculated programme of terror that left the international community both shocked and impotent to respond.
Karadzic, with his thick shock of grey hair, became a familiar sight to television viewers around the world in the 1990s, when his contempt for diplomacy and cynical manipulation of UN peacemaking efforts exasperated negotiators.
He was a close ally of Milosevic, and the pair cooperated militarily and politically to confuse the Serbs' enemies on the battlefields, and also in the halls of diplomacy.
The EU's French presidency described Karadzic's arrest as an "important step" by Serbia on the way to EU membership. Serbia's new government hopes to become an EU candidate by the end of this year and win full membership by 2012.
Karadzic is believed to have been detained in Belgrade's heavily guarded special war crimes court, where his brother Luka was seen late on Monday. He is likely to be transferred to The Hague within the next week.
Karadzic was to appear overnight before an examining magistrate in Belgrade, a court official said.
- AFP/yb
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