According to a Reuters report, the former "President" of the breakaway Bosnian Serb entity known as Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, has been arrested by Serbian authorities. Along with Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladić, Karadžić was wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Indictments were issued over a decade ago for war crimes committed during the conflict in Bosnia between 1992 and 1996.
In the ICTY indictment, Karadžić was charged, on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (Article 7(1) of the ICTY Statute) and superior criminal responsibility (Article 7(3) of the ICTY Statute), with two counts of genocide (Article 4 of the Statute - genocide, complicity in genocide), five counts of crimes against humanity (Article 5 of the ICTY Statute - extermination, murder, persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, persecutions, inhumane acts (forcible transfer), three counts of violations of the laws or customs of war (Article 3 of the ICTY Statute - murder, unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians, taking hostages), and a count of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions (Article 2 of the ICTY Statute - willful killing).
Karadžić and Mladić have evaded arrest for all these years, though they have reportedly been living openly in Serbia proper. The U.S. government even offered a $5 million reward for their arrests. The ICTY and media reports have well-documented the roles Karadžić and Mladić played in bringing about the war in Bosnia and directing the killing of Bosniaks, including the massacre in Srebrenica. Their folk-hero status within Serbia had given them an air of immunity and impunity.
So, it is a surprise and an incredibly hopeful development that Karadžić has been arrested by the Serbians. One hopes his trial will have a more satisfying outcome than the trial of Serb overlord Slobodan Milošević, who died before a verdict was rendered by the court in a years-long trial that had become somewhat of a farce.