Was war criminal Radovan Karadžić hiding in Belarus?

• 22.07.2008, 14:18

Circumstances of a possible secret visit to Belarus by Radovan Karadžić can be cleared up in the near future.

The former president of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadžić was arrested by Serbian authorities after receiving information from foreign intelligence, Reuters informs. According to Serbian president Boris Tadić, Karadžić has already started to testify to the investigators of War Crimes Court in Belgrade.

It is informed that during the first interrogation Radovan Karadžić told than unknown detained him on Friday evening, when he was on his way to Belgrade’s suburb in a bus. Observers do not rule out that the fact of Radovan Karadžić’s secret stay in Belarus is to be found out soon. According to the former press secretary of the former Chief Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague Carla Del Ponte, Florance Hartmann, in the end of the 1990ies Belarusian authorities offered Karadžić a hiding place in Belarus.

The author of the book “Peace and Justice” published in many countries of the world, told to Radio Svaboda:

“My book is about complex relations of international justice and international politics. In one of its parts exact facts about Karadžić and Mladić are published, and about how the international community didn’t want their arrest for a long time,” Florance Hartmann told to Radio Svaboda.

According to Florance Hartmann, Karadžić’s arrest will have great importance in the eyes of the international community.

“Until such criminals remain at large, people do not believe that international organisations are able to control the situation, that new cruelty and new crimes could be prevented in the world,” says Florance Hartmann.