In January 1994 I sat at a heavily laden lunch table at the headquarters of the Bosnian Serb leadership in the small ski resort of Pale in Bosnia. Across from me sat Radovan Karadzic, president of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb republic, flanked by Nikola Koljevic, Momcilo Krajisnik and other senior Serb leaders.
From 1993 to 1995 I was based in Bosnia’s besieged capital, Sarajevo, as a member of the political team of the United Nations UNPROFOR mission.
I often attended meetings with Karadzic. He was an imposing man who treated representatives of the international community with courtesy and hospitality, even while rejecting our policies and efforts to bring an end to the war. I was the only woman in the small group and he was always kind and chivalrous towards me, greeting me with a small gallant bow over my hand, a thoughtful word or a compliment about the UN radio programme I produced and presented.
But the UN policy of impartiality and the equal treatment of all sides to a conflict became increasingly difficult for me as I witnessed the death and destruction perpetrated by the Serbs.
The day of the lunch in Pale 14 years ago was a turning point. I felt sickened as I watched these seemingly ordinary men talking, laughing and sipping wine. Karadzic, his trademark mop of tousled hair spilling over his forehead, was laughing while Koljevic was relating a nostalgic incident from their student days.
It was surreal. In Pale, high in the mountains above Sarajevo, the skies were clear and the air smelt of pine. There were no exploding shells, no echoes of gunfire, no choking odour of burning garbage, no wine-coloured stains where blood had dried on the roads and pavements. The white-jacketed waiters served a fruity white wine from Dalmatia, steaming lamb, roast potatoes and vegetables. It was a sumptuous meal, but the food felt like cement in my mouth. I was thinking about the starving children in Sarajevo begging for food. And of the misery in my neighbours’ young daughter Anja’s eyes when she said: ‘I’m always hungry.â€
Karadzic and his comrades were educated, sophisticated men: he a flamboyant, charismatic psychiatrist and poet, Koljevic a soft-spoken Shakespearean scholar. But I could no longer ignore the fact that they had engineered the systematic murder, rape, torture and expulsion of millions of people. I asked for a transfer to a position where I would no longer have personal contact with them.
When the news broke on Tuesday that Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Like everyone who lived in Bosnia during the war, I have been waiting for this day even though, unlike my Bosnian friends, I was not a victim of Karadzic’s barbaric policies.
But I was an eyewitness to his excesses. I attended the meeting where the Serbs signed an agreement to spare the lives of the people of Srebrenica if they surrendered. Two years later they indiscriminately murdered more than 7 000 men and boys in Srebrenica. I was involved when a critically wounded little girl died because she was refused permission by Karadzic’s officials to leave Sarajevo for medical treatment that could have saved her life; when 300 prisoners of war returned broken and emaciated after two years of inhuman torture and deprivation; and when two young lovers were shot and left to die on a bridge within reach of help.
Koljevic committed suicide at the end of the war. Krajisnik was arrested and imprisoned. The Serbian police are now hunting for military commander Ratko Mladic, who is still on the run.
The wheels of justice move slowly, but Karadzic will finally pay his debt to the people of Bosnia.
The charges
- The United Nations indictment, last amended in 2000, accuses Karadzic of the following crimes between 1992 and 1996:
- One charge of genocide (Srebrenica and elsewhere in Bosnia);
- One of complicity in genocide (Srebrenica and elsewhere in Bosnia);
- One of extermination, a crime against humanity;
- One of murder as a crime against humanity;
- One of murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war;
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- One of wilful killing as a grave breach of the Geneva conventionsgoverning wartime conduct;
One of persecution;
- Two acts of deportation and other inhumane acts;
- One of inflicting terror upon civilians; and
- One of taking hostages.