A Serb raid, but pressure eases on war suspects
Recent NATO action can be seen more as a last-ditch effort than a stepped-up, organized campaign.
By Beth Kampschror | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the February 23, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 2
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA - Before dawn on Tuesday, NATO troops seeking indicted Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic raided the homes of relatives who they suspect have been aiding his 11-year flight from justice.
But rather than a stepped-up campaign to capture Mr. Karadzic and other men charged with genocide by the UN in 1995, the raid appears to be a last-ditch effort to catch the fugitive and his former associates.
Close friends of Karadzic have been recently acquitted of charges that they were helping to finance his life in hiding, and the European Union has backed away from demands that Serbia, which has provided refuge to a number of Bosnian Serb leaders charged with war crimes, give the men up as a precondition for ascension to the EU.
NATO officials said Tuesday's raid, which targeted the homes of Karadzic's grown son and daughter in Pale, nine miles east of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, was conducted as part of an effort to expose the shadowy network that Karadzic relies on.
But the efforts to break up his logistical and financial support network have been disjointed at best. Though Karadzic's wife, Ljilijan Zelen-Karadzic, and his son, Sasa, are banned from EU travel as part of a series of measures to pressure the family to give him up, his daughter, Sonja – whose home was raided on Tuesday – has been exempted.
Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, says that while there are photos of Sasa appearing with his father since the indictment, and a record of correspondence between Mr. and Mrs. Karadzic, there's no proof that Sonja is in touch with her father. "Adaptations to the list are always possible, but we need evidence of contact," she adds.
The sputtering effort to capture Karadzic has many causes, analysts say. The prosecution of his friends has been marked by incompetence and infighting among prosecutors on Bosnia's internationally supported courts, court members say; in Serbia, former associates like Gen. Ratko Mladic, who is accused of ordering the massacre of 7,500 unarmed Bosnians at Srebenica in 1995, are seen by many as heroes; and for the EU, its concerns over justice in the former Yugoslavia are being weighed against its desire to convince Serbia to allow its largely Muslim province of Kosovo to gain more independence, European diplomats say.
RSS feed
