After 13 long years supposedly on the run, the alleged architect of the worst war crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s was arrested by Serbian authorities on Monday. Radovan Karadzic, who was the leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the troubles, was plucked by police from a bus in Belgrade and quickly indicted by a court that consigned him for extradition to trial at the United Nations Balkan war crimes tribunal at The Hague in the Netherlands.
Mr. Karadzic was high on the list of wanted Balkan war criminals, so this is a cause for some celebration among people who care for human rights. In Sarajevo, where some of the worst atrocities of the war occurred during the lengthy siege of that city by Bosnian Serbs, there was dancing in the streets, and so there should be in every place where people understand that the enormity of what happened in the former Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1996 needs to be answered with justice.
Mr. Karadzic is accused of organizing the siege of Sarajevo, where more than 10,000 people were killed. Worst of all, he is alleged to be the artist of what the war crimes tribunal has described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history," the mass murder of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys from Srebenica, the worst slaughter of civilians in Europe since the end of the Second World War.
It defies belief that in a country as small and close-knit as Serbia, a man such as Radovan Karadzic could elude a determined police force for 13 years. What his arrest now would appear to speak to is the determination of a new Serb government to put the horrors of the past behind and move on to a brighter future in a bigger world than the Balkans can offer.
Even as Serb nationalists decry the arrest of Mr. Karadzic as an act of treason against the country -- he is still regarded by many as a hero -- more rational Serbs are anxious to make their country a full-fledged partner in Europe for the first time in its history.
Failure to pursue its war criminals keeps Serbia on the sidelines of the European Union, but this prosecution may finally have opened the door. In the capitals of Europe, the arrest was welcomed warmly and Belgrade is now regarded more benignly. That is good news, and not just for Serbs. In the rest of the Balkans, EU membership for Serbia would mean greater stability for the smaller nations. For Europe, it would take some tinder out of an age-old firebox. The trial of Mr. Karadzic may drag on for years, but Europe will be a safer place because of it.
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