Karadzic set to appear before UN tribunal
Plea expected in war crimes case
THE HAGUE - Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect, underwent a medical exam in a Dutch prison as he awaited his first appearance today before the UN tribunal that will try him. There he will be asked to enter a plea on charges stemming from the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, including genocide and crimes against humanity.
Karadzic, 63, was flown from Belgrade to Rotterdam, under heavy security and secrecy early yesterday and transferred to a detention center in The Hague near the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
"The arrest of Radovan Karadzic is immensely important for the victims who had to wait far too long for this day," said chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz, speaking at a news conference yesterday. "It is also important for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that there is no alternative to the arrest of war criminals and that there can be no safe haven for fugitives."
Karadzic was indicted in 1995 and was found in Belgrade last week disguised as a heavily bearded alternative-medicine practitioner. He has shaved and had his hair cut since his arrest, Serb officials said.
Along with his military commander Ratko Mladic, Karadzic became the public face of an ethnic cleansing campaign that brought some of Europe's worst atrocities since World War II.
Karadzic, the former president of Bosnia's Serb ministate and supreme commander of the Bosnian Serb army, is accused of the genocide of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians in a war that took nearly a quarter of a million lives.
The indictment alleges that Karadzic's forces ran detention facilities where non-Serbs were "tortured, mistreated, sexually assaulted and killed."
He is also accused of genocide for the mass killing of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. 