Butcher of Bosnia to Spend Rest of His Sentence in UK Jail
The so-called "Butcher of Bosnia," Radovan Karadzic, has arrived at a prison on the Isle of Wight in the UK, where he will spend the rest of his life.
He was flown from the Netherlands to the island off England's south coast to complete his sentence for war crimes and genocide.
The 75-year-old former politician arrived at Parkhurst jail following a decades-long legal fight to imprison him for his role in orchestrating genocide during the Balkan conflict in the 1990s. In 2016, he was given a 40-year prison sentence.
A UK government spokesperson told Metro newspaper: "We are working to safely manage the transfer of Mr. Karadzic. Promoting and enforcing international justice is central to Britain's role as a force for good in the world."
Karadzic was convicted of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre that saw 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian-Serb forces.
He was also found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, and for directing a campaign of ethnic cleansing that threw Croats and Muslims out of Serb-claimed territories in Bosnia. In 2019, UN judges at The Hague extended his previous jail term to a life sentence.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said earlier this month: "Karadzic is one of the few people to have been found guilty of genocide. He was responsible for the massacre of men, women and children at the Srebrenica genocide, and helped prosecute the siege of Sarajevo with its remorseless attacks on civilians."
Raab added: "We should take pride in the fact that, from UK support to secure his arrest, to the prison cell he now faces, Britain has supported the 30-year pursuit of justice for these heinous crimes."
Karadzic was arrested and delivered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 2008 following almost a decade in hiding.
Relatives of the Bosnian Muslims killed in the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II are getting ready to mark 25 years since the Srebrenica massacre on Saturday, but for many Serbs the episode remains a myth.
"It's not easy to live here next to those who 25 years on deny that a genocide was committed," says Hamdija Fejzic, Srebrenica's Muslim deputy mayor.
For Bosnian Muslims, recognizing the scale of the atrocity is a necessity for lasting peace. But for most Serbs - leaders and laypeople in both Bosnia and Serbia - using the word genocide remains unacceptable.
Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in a few days after capturing the ill-fated town on July 11, 1995.
The episode - labelled as genocide by two international courts - came at the end of a 1992-1995 war between Bosnia's Croats, Muslims and Serbs that claimed some 100,000 lives.
In the run-up to the anniversary, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic described Srebrenica as "something that we should not and cannot be proud of."
Several thousand Serbs and Muslims live side by side in impoverished Srebrenica, a lifeless town in eastern Bosnia with just a few shops open in its center. – Arab News
