Serbia holds Croatia war crimes suspect Goran Hadzic

Serbian authorities say they have arrested Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive sought by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Mr Hadzic, 52, is wanted for atrocities committed in the 1991-1995 war in Croatia. He led Croatian Serb separatist forces.
The arrest comes less than two months after Serbia caught former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.
Mr Hadzic is charged with the murder of hundreds of Croats and other non-Serbs.
Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed the arrest at a news conference.
Serbian officials say he was detained on Wednesday at Fruska Gora mountain, north of Belgrade, near his family home. He had always been presumed to be hiding there, the BBC's Mark Lowen reports from Belgrade.
Mr Hadzic went into hiding seven years ago, shortly after the sealed indictment against him was delivered to the government in Belgrade.
He may be transferred to The Hague within days. Gen Mladic was arrested on 26 May and flown to The Hague on 31 May.
EU leaders congratulated Serbia for capturing Mr Hadzic, calling it a signal of Serbia's commitment to "a better European future". Mr Tadic has made joining the EU a key goal of Serbian foreign policy.
Wartime atrocities Mr Hadzic was a central figure in the self-proclaimed Serb republic of Krajina in 1992-1993, leading the campaign to block Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia.

Counts against Goran Hadzic

• Count 1: PERSECUTION of Croats and other non-Serbs, on political, racial, and religious grounds
• Counts 2-4: EXTERMINATION AND MURDER of hundreds of Croats and non-Serbs, including 264 taken from Vukovar hospital and shot
• Counts 5-9: IMPRISONMENT, TORTURE, INHUMANE ACTS AND CRUEL TREATMENT against thousands of detainees, in camps where torture, starvation and sexual assault were common
• Counts 10-11: DEPORTATION, FORCIBLE TRANSFER of up to 90,000 Croats and non-Serbs from parts of Croatia
• Counts 12-14: WANTON DESTRUCTION, PLUNDER OF PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PROPERTY including homes and religious and cultural buildings

Mr Hadzic, indicted in 2004, faces 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including persecution, extermination, torture, deportation and wanton destruction for his involvement in atrocities committed by Serb troops in Croatia.

He is held responsible for the massacre of almost 300 men in Vukovar in 1991 by Croatian Serb troops and for the deportation of 20,000 people from the town after it was captured.
President Tadic insisted that Serbian investigators had been "working very hard in the past three years" to capture Mr Hadzic.
"You have to prepare your actions, at the end of the day you get concrete results," he said, comparing the search for Mr Hadzic to the decade-long US hunt for Osama Bin Laden, who was shot dead by US special forces this year.
Our correspondent says the Hadzic case was seen as the last big obstacle to Serbia gaining EU candidate status and a start date for accession talks. There was a $1.4m (£870,000) bounty out for his capture.
A statement from EU leaders said the arrest was "a further important step for Serbia in realising its European perspective and equally crucial for international justice.
"We salute the determination and commitment of Serbia's leadership in this effort.
"Following the capture of Ratko Mladic, this arrest sends a positive signal to the European Union and to Serbia's neighbours, but most of all on the rule of law in Serbia itself. The Serbian nation is in the process of confronting the past and turning the page to a better European future."
The statement was issued by EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton.
Mr Hadzic lived openly in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad untily 13 July 2004, when he fled because of the indictment against him, Reuters news agency reports.
For years the prosecutors in The Hague complained that Belgrade was not doing enough to track down top war crimes suspects including Mr Hadzic, and that criticism delayed progress in Serbia's EU bid.
Mr Hadzic was born in 1958 in Pacetin, near Vinkovici, in Croatia. He became a political activist in the 1990s when he joined the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), and later headed the separatist Serb government in Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem.

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