Ten years after Radovan Karadzic's troops
killed 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica,
the former Serb leader remains at large.
In this remarkable report from the heart of Bosnia,
Antony Barnett goes on the trail of Europe's most
notorious war criminal
Sunday June 26, 2005
The Observer
What strikes you first is the colour of the house. As you drive along the bumpy stone road that leads to the family home of Dr Radovan Karadzic, Europe's most wanted war criminal, its garish pink exterior bursts out in front of you. But despite its bright facade, it is a house that hides many dark secrets.
On Monday 11 July it will be 10 years since Karadzic's Bosnian Serb soldiers marched into the United Nations safe haven at Srebrenica and slaughtered more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Yet Karadzic, the chief architect of this massacre - as well as the mastermind of the 1,000-day siege of Sarajevo that saw 10,000 civilians killed, 1,000 of them children - remains a free man.
Despite a $5 million (£2.7m) bounty on his head, Karadzic is a fugitive. Protected by a secret underground network made up of politicians, criminals, spies, businessmen and priests from the Orthodox church, Karadzic - a psychiatrist, children's author and poet in another life - is believed to be hiding in the mountains of eastern Bosnia close to the border with Montenegro.
His liberty remains a major embarrassment to the international community and an open sore in a country where 200,000 people were killed in a bitter ethnic war between Serb, Muslims and Croats. There can be no healing until Karadzic faces justice.
A decade after Srebenica and his indictment at The Hague, The Observer set out on a journey to reveal the network built to hide a man accused of committing the worst atrocities witnessed in Europe since the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1514824,00.html
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