FWD: Karadzic escaped

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

www2.inet.co.yu

INET NEWS (BELGRADE)
Saturday 14 July 2001

11:40 Members of British SAS special forces attempted on Friday
to arrest former Republika Srpska president Radovan Karadzic.
During the attempt, Karadzic's personal defense killed 10 and
wounded two members of these forces.
___________________________


OBSERVER Karadzic escapes Nato's night raiders


http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,522097,00.html

THE OBSERVER (UK)
Sunday 15 July 2001

Karadzic escapes Nato's night raiders 

Gun battle as peacekeepers
swoop on Bosnian war criminal 

Nicholas Wood in Foca and Peter Beaumont

Radovan Karadzic, Bosnia's most wanted
war criminal, has escaped arrest after a
botched attempt to snatch him by soldiers
from the Nato peacekeeping force, S-For,
ended in a gun battle with his bodyguards.

Although an official S-For spokesman
refused to confirm any operation to arrest
Karadzic, three separate S-For sources in
the Bosnian Serb town of Banja Luka told
The Observer that at least two Nato
soldiers were injured. One source said the
operation was still continuing. 

Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb
president, who is wanted by the war
crimes tribunal in The Hague to face
charges of genocide during the Bosnian
war, has played a cat-and-mouse game
with Nato forces for the past six years.
Nato troops have orders to arrest him on
sight. 

The former Bosnian Serb leader, who is
known to have a well-armed bodyguard,
has sworn that he will not be taken alive
to The Hague. 

He is said to move in the areas around
Foca, Visegrad and the Montenegrin
border and to have shaved off his
distinctive wavy hair to disguise himself as
a priest. 

Although local media in Montenegro and
Belgrade reported yesterday that 10
British soldiers from the Special Air
Service had been killed in the operation,
the reports were emphatically denied by
the Ministry of Defence which also denied
that any British soldiers had been involved
in the attempt to arrest Karadzic. 

According to S-For sources the gun battle
took place in the early hours of Friday
after a multi-national force located his
hideout in the Bosnian Serb Republica
Srpska. Bosnian Serb sources in the town
of Pale said that Karadzic had most
recently been hiding in the village of
Zavait, near the border with Montenegro. 

The Observer had been tipped off earlier in
the week by sources on the trail of
Karadzic and by Nato sources that
Karadzic would be arrested within days
and taken to The Hague after he had been
located by S-For troops and placed under
surveillance. 

Sources told The Observer that the
surveillance operation had involved
soldiers from the SAS, although it
appears they may not have been involved
in the attempted arrest. 'There was an
operation. There were casualties and it
was aborted,' one S-For source said
yesterday. 

A warrant has been out for Karadzic's
arrest since 1995, and he is charged with
20 war crimes, including genocide, crimes
against humanity and violation of the laws
or customs of war. 

Karadzic has been sheltered by his
supporters and hidden in a series of
villages in the mountainous and sparsely
populated Republica Srpska. A previous
attempt by Nato troops to snatch
Karadzic fell through when he was
apparently tipped off by the Frenchthat his
arrest was imminent. 

Details of the operation were steeped in
confusion yesterday. A UN source in
Sarajevo said: 'Everyone is talking about it
but we are finding it impossible to get any
information on what is going on.' 

The reports of the attempt to seize
Karadzic and take him to The Hague
come as pressure has mounted on the
Bosnian Serb authorities to hand him over
or co-operate with the tribunal in tracking
him down. It also comes amid evidence
that the mood among ordinary Bosnian
Serbs is turning towards acceptance of
the fact that Karadzic will be handed over
sooner rather than later to join his former
master Slobodan Milosevic in prison. 

Last week his wife insisted he would not
surrender voluntarily. 'The attitude of
Radovan Karadzic has not changed, nor
will it change under any conditions,'
Ljiljana Zelen- Karadzic said in a
statement. 

Her comments followed hard on the heels
of a visit by the Bosnian Serb Prime
Minister Mladen Ivanic, to the war crimes
tribunal where he told chief war crimes
prosecutor Carla del Ponte that the
Bosnian Serb parliament was ready to
pass a new law allowing co-operation with
the tribunal. It also follows a Nato pledge
that Karadzic and his military chief Ratko
Mladic would be brought to justice 'come
what may'.


Kurt-Werner Pörtner