July 22, 2008 5:59 AM

Justice delayed still means 100,000 dead

(CNN) -- Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic has been arrested after more than a decade in hiding, a U.N. war crimes tribunal announced Monday. Karadzic, 63, is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war. He was the Bosnian Serb political leader during the 1992-1995 war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia -- the time of the Srebrenica massacre and siege of Sarajevo. He was last seen in public in 1996. Former U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke blamed Karadzic for all the deaths in the three-year war in Bosnia, which had the bloodiest of the Balkan conflicts that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia.... "Without Radovan Karadzic, this thing wouldn't have happened," Holbrooke told CNN.

I've long dreamed of a time when Radovan Karadzic would be brought to justice. Never did I imagine that it would take so long, or that the Serbian government would take their sweet time in capturing one of the few war criminals on a par with Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader ©.

Karadzic' whereabouts had to be an open secret throughout Serbia. My experience with the Serbian police is that there isn't much that escapes their attention. Hey, the country used to be- and in many respects still is- a police state. Official repression was not just habit; it was policy. To say that the Serbian government and it's police spent the past 13 years ignorant of Karadzic' whereabouts strains credibility. They knew; they just didn't want to do anything that would piss off the nutjob Right-wing nationalists that seemed to be everywhere when I was there.

Karadzic was captured in Belgrade...which only tells me that the Serbian government was complicit in his flight from justice. It's not as if he was hiding in a remote mountain village. No, he was hiding in plain sight in Serbia's capitol city- one of the most recognizable Serb war criminals hiding amongst those who think as he does and consider him to be a hero...and most Serbs do.

Remember, it's not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you...and most Serbs firmly believe that the world has it out for them.

Karadzic deserves to be tried, convicted, and executed quickly. If there's any justice in this world, his execution will come at the hands of those whom he subjected to mistreatment and oppression simply because they weren't fortunate enough to be born Serb. I hope that his execution will be a slow and excruciatingly painful one. A war criminal completely devoid of humanity and compassion hardly deserves to be treated with the very humanity and compassion he denied to so many.

Thirteen years later...and Evil is still Evil. Now, where the Hell is Ratko Mladic?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on July 22, 2008 5:59 AM.

Turn-about is fair play, no? Even if this would never, ever happen. was the previous entry in this blog.

Go ahead...ask me how much I miss Texas is the next entry in this blog.

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