Bosnian Serb Massacre Suspect Faces Trial
A judge on Tuesday finished interrogating Radovan Karadzic - the first step in a procedure aimed at handing the accused mastermind of Europe's worst massacre since World War II over to a U.N. war crimes court.
"The questioning is over," investigating Judge Milan Dilparic said about the opening round of the legal process, which included presenting the wartime Bosnian Serb leader with the indictment and allowing Karadzic three days to appeal any decision to extradite him to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
Karadzic's lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, said he will appeal the extradition.
A Serbian government official said later Tuesday that Karadzic used a false identity while on the run.
Rasim Ljajic said at a Belgrade news conference that Karadzic practiced "alternative medicine" and worked at a clinic while in hiding.
Karadzic - the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal's most-wanted fugitive - was arrested near Belgrade on Monday night after a decade on the run.
Ljajic and Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic showed a photo of Karadzic with glasses, and with long, white hair and a beard.
Karadzic had topped the tribunal's most-wanted list for more than a decade.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports Karadzic stands accused of orchestrating the siege of Sarajevo, which killed 10,000 people, and the massacre in Srebrenica - three days during which 8,000 muslim men and boys were executed and buried in a mass grave.
Those remains have been dug up and painstakingly analysed by forensic experts to build the prosecution's case against Karadzic at the International Criminal Court, says Palmer.
Serbia has been under intense pressure from the European Union to turn over Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects, but Karadzic's arrest Monday night came as a surprise to many.
Karadzic, 63, was arrested Monday evening by Serbian security services and taken before the investigative judge of Serbia's war crimes court, indicating imminent extradition to The Hague, President Boris Tadic's office said.
A Serbian police source said Karadzic was arrested in an unidentified Belgrade suburb following a tip from a foreign intelligence service that had been monitoring his safehouse for weeks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media.
However, Vujacic, Karadzic's lawyer, said he was arrested on a bus at about 9:30 a.m. Friday and held until he was brought to the court Monday.
"He just said that these people showed him a police badge and then he was taken to some place and kept in the room. And that is absolutely against the law what they did," Vujacic told AP Television News. "The judge also said that he will look into this matter, who and why kept him for three days."
Governments worldwide hailed the arrest of the man described by the tribunal as the mastermind of "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called it a "historic moment."
"This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade," said the tribunal's head prosecutor, Serge Brammertz. "It clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice."
"We have waited for this for 13 years. Finally. Finally," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in Brussels. "This is a very good thing for the rapprochement of Serbia with the European Union."
Karadzic's whereabouts had been a mystery to U.N. prosecutors. His reported hide-outs included monasteries and mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. Prosecutors suspect the elaborated disguised fugitive eluded a decade-long manhunt with the help of Bosnian Serb nationalists.
However, the nationalists lost power when a new pro-Western government took over last month. The new government removed the nationalist official who was chief of the secret police.
"It is clear that those changes led to Karadzic's arrest," prominent Serbian human rights activist Natasa Kandic said.
His wife, Ljiljana, told The Associated Press by telephone from her home in Pale that her daughter called her Monday night with the news.
"I'm shocked. Confused. At least now, we know he is alive," Ljiljana Karadzic said, declining further comment.
"He did not surrender; that is not his style," his brother, Luka Karadzic, said outside the court.
But in Belgrade, Karadzic supporters chanted: "Karadzic: Hero!" and "Tadic: Traitor!" Several were arrested after attacking reporters.
Other officers took up positions throughout central Belgrade and in front of the U.S. Embassy, which was targeted in nationalist rioting over Kosovo's declaration of independence in February.
In the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, which was besieged throughout the war by Bosnian Serb nationalists, streets were jammed late Monday as Bosnian Muslims celebrated the arrest.
During the siege of Sarajevo, the Serbs starved, sniped and bombarded the city center, operating from strongholds in Pale and Vraca high above the city and controlling nearly all roads in and out.
Inhabitants were kept alive only by a thin lifeline of food aid and supplies provided by U.N. donors and peacekeepers, risking their lives merely by walking down the street to shop for groceries or by driving down a main road that became known as "Sniper Alley."
The siege, which began in April 1992, was not officially lifted until February 1996 after NATO intervention and the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords. During that time, an estimated 10,000 people died in and around the city.
The international tribunal indicted Karadzic on genocide charges in 1995. The psychiatrist and self-styled poet-turned-hardline Serbian nationalist still wielded power among Bosnian Serbs from the shadows and occasionally appeared in public before going on the run in 1998.
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. diplomat who brokered the Dayton deal, said Karadzic was responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people and his arrest marked "a historic day."
"A man who has been on the run for 12 years, who NATO should have captured, has been captured - and by the Serb government themselves," Holbrooke told CNN television. "This guy was a kind of a Robin Hood to the Bosnian Serbs, evading capture for 12 years, fomenting dissent. His removal from the scene will help enormously to create stability."
In 1995, Serb troops led by wartime military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic overran Serbrenica, a U.N. enclave sheltering Bosnian Muslims. Mladic's troops rounded up the entire population and took the men away for execution. He remains at large.
At war's end in late 1995, an estimated 250,000 people were dead and another 1.8 million driven from their homes.
"There is no better tribute to the victims of the war's atrocities than bringing their perpetrators to justice," the Bush administration said in Washington.
Under the U.N. indictment, last amended in May 2000, the U.N. war crimes tribunal Karadzic faces 11 counts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities committed between 1992 to 1996.
He would be the 44th Serb suspect sent to the tribunal in The Hague. The others include former President Slobodan Milosevic, who died there in 2006 while on trial.
Munira Subasic, who lost two sons in the Srebrenica massacre, was overcome with emotion as she watched the news on television.
"After 13 years, we finally reached the moment of truth," she told AP Television News.