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Tribunal Calls on West
To Arrest Karadzic, MladicBy Ian Geohegan
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Prosecutors at a Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal urged major powers on Monday to arrest Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic and hand them over to The Hague to stand trial for genocide.
The call came as U.N. investigators began to unearth mass graves of massacre victims, starting with Muslims killed in the Bosnian Serb conquest of Srebrenica a year ago, believed to have been Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.
Prosecutor Mark Harmon criticized the international community for failing to arrest the tribunal's two most wanted men, who were first charged last July, but remain in the Bosnian Serb stronghold at Pale, near Sarajevo. At the weekend, the U.S. commander of NATO peacekeeping troops in Bosnia said he would neither detain nor intimidate Karadzic, the separatists' political leader.
On the eighth day of public hearings against the two indicted war criminals, Harmon said: "We believe the evidence we have presented...is more than sufficient to demonstrate that there are reasonable grounds for believing that Dr Karadzic and General Mladic committed genocide..." Tribunal judge Claude Jorda is expected to reconfirm the indictments and issue international arrest warrants against Karadzic and Mladic on Thursday, making them fugitives, unable to leave Bosnian Serb territory without risking capture and extradition to The Hague.
"Today, both Karadzic and Mladic remain fugitives from international justice," Harmon said. "As we approach the first anniversary of...tragic massacres...that annihilated a generation of Srebrenicians and left thousands of widows and orphans, the resulting toll of human misery...will be felt for generations to come. In the Balkans... Karadzic's and Mladic's perfidious and cowardly deeds will long be remembered. What should not be remembered is that the world had the ability to bring these two alleged architects of genocide to justice and did nothing. It will haunt the victims and it will shame us all."
Harmon asked that the U.N. Security Council, which created the tribunal three years ago, be informed of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's failure to arrest the two accused. "Karadzic and Mladic remain at liberty today, in no small measure due to the failure of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to arrest them and transfer them to The Hague."
He said evidence showed that Karadzic and Mladic "instigated, planned and ordered the genocide and the "ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia...crimes which have shocked the conscience of the world." He cited 14 witnesses, ranging from historians, alleged victims and U.N. peacekeepers to the mayors of Sarajevo and Tuzla and a young Croat who said he was forced to shoot unarmed Muslims at Srebrenica. Listing a grisly catalogue of alleged atrocities, Harmon said Serb targets, from Muslims and Croats to ethnic and cultural sites, "were systematically destroyed for no other reason than to eradicate traces of cultural identity.
"The fury and cruelty of...these attacks was limited only by the perpetrator's inability to imagine darker deeds."
Harmon charged that, as the political and military chiefs, Karadzic and Mladic controlled the 3½-year siege of Sarajevo, which killed some 12,000 civilians, and ordered the bloody Serb assault on the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica in July 1995. Karadzic "treated Sarajevo and the lives of its citizens as his personal plaything," he said, adding: "There can be no doubt that both Karadzic and Mladic could have stopped this killing whenever they wanted."
Describing the carnage following the attack on Srebrenica, Harmon said Mladic strutted around lying to thousands of refugees that nothing would happen to them.
"It is hard to imagine a more callous and calculated deception." As Mladic was speaking, his soldiers had already started their "murderous binge," Harmon told the court. Pashaga Mesic, the mayor of Tuzla, testified on Friday that over 6,000 people were missing since the fall of Srebrenica.
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SREBRENICA
Berserkistan, July 3 · Bosnians Venture into Serb Land to Visit Srebrenica Graves
Berserkistan, July 3 · Mladic Promised Safety to Srebrenica Muslims
Berserkistan, June 8 · Srebrenica Victim Graves Probed at Brnica
Berserkistan, June 5 · Mass Grave at Nova Kasaba May Hold 2700 Srebrenica Victims
Berserkistan, May 29 · Documentary Claims Serbia Provided Srebrenica Arms
Berserkistan, Massacre Hill Jim Bartlett in Bosnia's Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Ghosts in the Woods Team Berserkistan Investigates a Srebrenica Massacre Site
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