Four years after his original indictment, another alleged war criminal from the former Yugoslavia has been arrested and will shortly be brought before The Hague Tribunal. Former Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina, who is held responsible for the butchery of 150 Serb civilians as well as systematic looting, was arrested in August by Spanish police in a Canary Islands hotel where he was on holiday.
The wheels of international justice are certainly grinding slowly when it comes to tracking down indicted war criminals from the Balkans, but at least in the case of Gotovina, the third most wanted suspect, they have finally been successful. The world still waits to see the capture of the top two accused: former Serbian Gen. Ratko Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic.
Gotovina was obliged to quit the Croatian Army when the Hague investigators indicted him. However, the Croatian government has denied that they knew the whereabouts of the former general, who is seen by some Croatians as a hero. Claims that he had fled abroad were disbelieved by the European Union. Convinced that the authorities in Zagreb were deliberately impeding Gotovina’s arrest, they suspended negotiations over Croatia’s eventual accession to the EU. The fact that the former general was arrested abroad does not however prove that his former masters had no idea where he was. It may well be that they knew his movements precisely and finally decided to reveal them to rid themselves of a political embarrassment. If only the Serbian authorities felt the same way about Mladic and Karadzic.
However loudly Belgrade may protest that they are untraceable, if the political will was there, they could be found. It is a matter of shame for all Serbs that two such high-profile suspects remain hidden from justice. The arrest of such a high-profile Croatian for barbarous crimes allegedly committed against Serbs ought to convince many in Serbia that the activities of the Hague Tribunal are not simply targeted against them. Bosnians have been charged with crimes against Croats and against Serbs, and Croats have been indicted for crimes against Bosnians.
The horrific bloodletting into which the former Yugoslavia sank when first Slovenia and then Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence is a matter of shame for all former Yugoslavs. The savagery with which first some Serbs tried to hold together the old Yugoslavia, followed by the brutal response of some of those who were fighting for their freedom, reopened the deep ethnic scars that have disfigured the Balkans for long.
There is no point pretending that bringing the guilty men on all sides to justice in the Hague will heal those wounds entirely, but it will send out a clear message that in Europe such wicked bloodletting against innocent and defenseless civilians will not be tolerated. Until Mladic and Karadzic and the other remaining suspects-at-large stand before the bar of international justice, the Balkans — and Serbia in particular — cannot really start to build a decent future.
