The arrest of Radovan Karadžić back in 2008 prompted me to write at some length about him and his life and times. See here. Two pieces read nicely now. This one: Karadžić looks to have been a second-rate romantic who became improbably entangled in Bosnian nationalist politics and then was […]
Last night I was back again at the Frontline Club to hear Allan Little talk to Nick Hawton about the latter’s new book The Quest for Radovan Karadzic: When everybody else seemed to have given the hunt, one journalist doggedly followed his trail, travelling from the snow-capped mountains of Montenegro […]
The claim by the defence of Radovan Karadzic that he had a deal with Richard Holbrooke ("This is it – leave public and political life in Republika Srpska and you won’t have to go to the Hague." "OK…") is back in the news again. Back in mid-1996, only a few months […]
These celebrity revivals are sooooo exhausting. First we have the long-awaited return to the stage of Joker Karadzic, although without his funny costume and disguise he was really not that scary. And with him returns Batman Holbrooke, the distinguished former American diplomat whose considerable ego and ruthlessness helped bring peace to the […]
A bit more on Karadzic, alas. Dick Holbrooke says that there was No Deal struck by him with Karadzic under which if Karadzic left political life he would not be sent to the Hague Tribunal. Karadzic in his first appearance at ICTY tried to get this claim established, but failed. […]
Radovan Karadzic appears before the Hague Tribunal today. Kurir (a Belgrade newspaper with pronounced populist tendencies) quotes his lawyer as saying that Karadzic will not accept the start of ICTY proceedings until his laptop and 50 disks are returned to him. These items containing all the elements of his defence and […]
Too much Karadzic can be wearing, but the pieces at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on the man and his arrest are excellent, especially this one: In the end, Karadzic miscalculated. His dream of uniting all Serbs in a single state failed, and now they are scattered across five independent countries. His […]
The steady insight of Lord Owen, with the deafening noise emitted by Simon Jenkins. Good piece in the Independent too. But they spoil it by adding a list of War criminals still at large. These people are not war criminals. They are war crimes suspects or indictees, unless and until they […]
A comment by me adding some operational background on international attempts to arrest Karadzic is up at the Independent’s Open House.
Finally. Radovan Karadzic the former Green activist has been arrested, in Belgrade. I never met him. By the time I reached Sarajevo in mid-1996 he was already lying low, although not that low. NATO troops were in effect instructed not to look for him or other war crimes suspects, but to arrest them […]
