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BELGRADE: With war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic finally in
custody, Serbia came under increased pressure Thursday to capture
his fugitive wartime military chief Ratko Mladic, also wanted for
genocide.
“The Serbs are making a step forward in
closing an ugly chapter in their past, and I just hope that Mladic
is next,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Singapore
during an Asian tour.
Karadzic, disguised under flowing white locks of
hair and thick beard, was arrested while riding a suburban bus in
Belgrade on Monday night.
He is set to be moved to the UN war crimes court
in the next few days despite mounting a legal challenge against the
transfer from his prison cell in the Serbian capital.
The wartime Bosnian Serb leader intends to
defend himself in the trial, raising concerns of a chaotic, marathon
case like that of his former ally, Slobodan Milosevic, who died in
detention at The Hague-based tribunal in 2006.
Karadzic, 63, had gone into hiding the year
after he was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia in 1995 together with Mladic, 65.
Both face charges of genocide, complicity in
genocide, extermination, murder, willful killing, persecutions,
deportation and inhumane acts against Muslims, Croats and other
non-Serb civilians during Bosnia’s 1992 to 1995 war.
As more details emerged about the fake life
Karadzic led as a guru healer to avoid being caught during more than
a decade on the run, Rice said his arrest was a major “step
forward for Serbia.”
-- AFP
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