The most wanted criminal in the world (comparable to Usama Bin Laden) has been hiding not in the mountain caves of the Eastern Bosnia and not in the cells of distant monasteries. He has been renting an apartment in a Belgrade suburb. He worked in a private clinic and contributed to some medical journal. He even gave public lectures on comparison of meditation methods with the silence techniques by orthodox monks. He also had his own website.     

He introduced himself as Dragan Drabic. His visit cards bore the name D.D.David and two mobile phones. That was not too much of conspiracy. Oddly, no one could recognize him – colleagues, patients, strange fellows in the casino of the Metropol Hotel where he used to play the roulette. He was not recognized by the frequent callers of the neighboring bar where he liked to have a glass of wine in the evening. The bar’s name was “Bughouse”.     

The name would also fit well the Yugoslavia of the last twenty years. Our hero was one of the most prominent characters of that house, ruined and burnt by the tenants; the madman and the poet who fancied he was the chief psychiatrist, and that really was his specialty by education. This self-running politician, a passionate patriot, who transgressed the bounds of humanity, has been on the run for 13 years. 

He was born in 1945 in a Chernogorian village. He was a Chetnik’s son – Chetniks were Serbian nationalists during the WWII who acted both against Germans and Tito’s partisans. Karadzic’s childhood was spent while his father was kept in Tito’s prison. He got a medical education in Sarajevo where he got in the age of 15 and where he felt ill at ease. There he published his first book of poems, which passed rather unnoticed. He got real recognition on the political front. His hobbyhorse was the great Serbian idea, which he expressed at the moment where all the Yugoslavian nationalists began to talk openly, and those voices added up into tectonic-like noise.      

After light flirt with the “greens” in 1990 he finally felt himself playing the prominent part. He organized the Serbian Democratic Party. In 1991 he threatened to destroy Bosnian Muslims, when speaking in the Bosnian parliament. In 1992 Karadzic proclaimed the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and himself to be its head.     

So Yugoslavia was turned formally into a federation of 6 republics and a krai. After a decade and a half all of them would become independent, after three wars. Each of them would pay its price, with the biggest one paid by Bosnia and Herzegovina, with their most insoluble Yugoslavian knot. The striped pattern was the feature of the whole former country, which caused the ethnic cleansings of various scale. However, as a rule, each of the Yugoslavian republics had one titular ethnic group. And Bosnia and Herzegovina had three ones – Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croatians.     

Finally, the Bosnian war of 1992-1995 was most atrocious and bloody among all the Yugoslavian wars, with the casualties of 200,000 and 2,000,000 refugees and displaced persons. Besiege of Sarajevo and slaughter in Srebrenitsa have been two most terrible carnages that happened in Europe since the WWII. Both were organized by President of Serbian Republic Radovan Karadzic and his commander in chief Ratko Mladic. I’m not trying to diminish the role by Milosevic. This main director of the Yugoslavian war designed the scenarios, provided for pyrotechnics and pulled strings. But it was exactly Karadzic and Mladic to rule the Bosnian war arena, and they were not marionettes.     

Besiege of Sarajevo was a combination of chaotic artillery firing and sniper’s hunting after live targets. It lasted 43 months. Ten thousands city dwellers died. What the town was turned into is best forgotten. 

The events in Srebrenitsa were described many times. The city of Srebrenitsa, the enclave in the Serbian part of Bosnia, where Muslims refugees had arrived, was announced to be “a peace shelter” protected by the UNO, after long battles. The three sides signed an agreement about that. The real guarantor of peace, the battalion of the UN troops was billeted at the site. Along with that, in accordance with the requirement by the Serbs the defending Muslims had to give up their heavy materiel to the UN guarantors. After that, 2,000 Serbian soldiers with tanks forwarded towards Srebrenitsa. They took immediately 30 UN soldiers as hostages. General Mladic flung out ultimatum to the UN: if aviation were used against his troops, then the hostages would be shot, while Srebrenitsa would be leveled with the ground.       

The battalion of “blue helmets” practically laid down arms. The resistance of the city’s defenders was born down. Next days 20,000 women, children and old people from Srebrenitsa were brought by trucks to the Muslim’s territory. And the men and youths (over 7,000 people according to the UN data) were shot in cool blood. That shooting was recorded with video which became the evidence in the Milosevic’s trial. In 2005 the video was shown on Yugoslavian television and that material shocked Europe. I did not see that video to be shown on Russian television. 

The operation was planned and executed by Karadzic and Mladic. That was an exampling purge.

And that was an exampling defeat of the international community. The universal UNO, mighty Security Council where all the nuclear powers are included, and the veto right which is not applied to the bandits… The organization intended for maintaining peace on the planet, proved unable to provide for life saving even on the tiny territory it had avowed for.  

The just caught Radovan Karadzic and still hiding Ratko Mladic are accused of genocide, military crimes and crimes against humanity.  

…On the Echo Moskvy radio Mr. Prokhanov spoke like sent about what a good man Radovan Karadzic is. The champion for the sacred idea, the real national hero! Other voices are echoing, saying how mean it has been of Serbian authorities to give him up to the paws of Hague! That’s the real betraying of the national interests and authentic crime for you! As for blood, it has been shed lots of it for the sacred cause, does it really matter!    

Really, many great ideas inspired the mankind in the 20th century alone. Isn’t it proper to allow some genocide, military crimes and crimes against humanity just for achieving the common happiness!   

No, it is not proper. The international sense of justice had come to the consensus about that by the end of the 20th century. No idea may justify crimes against humanity. The Hague Court is an expression and instrument of that sense of justice. It’s no perfect, but it is acting. The bench is filled with “heroes” from all sides: Serbs, Croatians, Bosnians, Kosovo Albanians. Serbs to be in bigger number? Well, Serbia is bigger than others.  

Incidentally, each of the examined in Hague crimes has a strict definition and requires solid evidence. So Karadzic’s trial is going to be done in objective way. No doubt, his accomplice Mladic will soon find himself on the bench too. First years of his “being on the run” he lived openly in Belgrade, even without growing a beard. Like Karadzic he was under unpublished protection by mighty powers, as top military and security service officials were faithful to the past. And people would not give them up either. It took time so that bitter realism get over the emotions. The landmark of that process was when a coalition government was formed consisting of Democratic Party of Boris Tadic and socialists whose undisputable leader was…Slobodan Milosevic not long ago. Yesterday no one could imagine a representative of this party to sign delivering up anyone to Hague, and today the post of interior ministry is occupied exactly by a socialist. And which is more significant, the Socialist Party has spoken for the European choice for Serbia. This metamorphosis is the most principal and promising thing to have happened in the long-suffering country.        

Probably, the future historians would fix that with this decision Serbia has crossed the Rubicon. It’s no easy getting out of the darkness of the past, but the first steps are the most difficult.