[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 16197]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      CAPTURE OF RADOVAN KARADZIC

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition today to 
commend Serbian authorities for apprehending former Republika Srpska 
president Radovan Karadzic. Earlier this month we marked the 13th 
anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica. The arrest this week of 
Radovan Karadzic, in connection with that crime, shows that it is never 
too late to seek justice for the terrible crimes committed during the 
1992-95 war in Bosnia. Over a decade after being indicted for genocide, 
crimes against humanity, and war crimes by the International Criminal 
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, at The Hague, Radovan 
Karadzic was arrested on Monday, July 21, outside Belgrade.
  Radovan Karadzic's arrest represents a significant breakthrough for 
international jurisprudence. Serge Brammertz, prosecutor of the war 
crimes tribunal in The Hague, said, ``This is a very important day for 
the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade.'' ``It 
is also an important day for international justice because it clearly 
demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner 
or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.''
  Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton Accords in 1995 which 
ended the war in Bosnia, said, ``This is a historic event.'' ``Of the 
three most evil men of the Balkans, Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, I 
thought Karadzic was the worst. The reason was that Karadzic was a real 
racist believer. Karadzic really enjoyed ordering the killing of 
Muslims. . . .
  Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International 
Justice Program, said, ``Radovan Karadzic personified impunity for more 
than a decade, but his efforts to run the clock on justice have 
failed.'' ``This arrest offers hope to the victims of the horrific 
crimes that occurred here. We welcome this long-overdue arrest and look 
forward to his fair trial in The Hague.''
  I commend the Serbian Government for the resolve it has demonstrated 
in arresting Mr. Karadzic. I think it is vital that Mr. Karadzic be 
transferred to The Hague in due course, and that the search for 
Republika Srpska military commander General Ratko Mladic continue. It 
is vital that the international community, including the United States, 
continue to support efforts to bring justice for these crimes, not just 
in The Hague, but also at the local level in Bosnia, where lack of 
resources and other obstacles mean that many victims continue to wait 
for justice for the crimes committed against them. To that end, local 
war crimes trials for thousands of other suspected perpetrators from 
the Bosnia atrocities must receive support to overcome the challenges 
they face in order to seal any remaining impunity gaps in Bosnia.
  To echo a statement I made on the Senate floor on February 11, 1998, 
it is my sense that if the war crimes tribunal at The Hague is 
successful, if we can bring the rule of law into the international 
arena, we may have the most important institutional change in 
international relations of the past century.

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