Radovan Karadzic: Ex-Bosnian Serb leader to be sent to UK prison

EPA

Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader convicted of genocide during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, is to serve the rest of his life sentence in a British jail.

The Foreign Office says he would be transferred to a UK prison from a UN detention unit in the Netherlands.

Karadzic, 75, was also found guilty at his 2016 criminal tribunal of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A 40-year prison sentence was later increased to life.

His conviction for genocide related to his responsibility for the murder of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.

It was considered one of the worst massacres in Europe since the 1940s.

Judges also held Karadzic responsible for the siege of Sarajevo, a campaign of shelling and sniping which lasted more than three years and led to the deaths of an estimated 10,000 civilians.

• Karadzic war crimes sentence raised to life
• Profile: Radovan Karadzic

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: "Radovan Karadzic is one of the few people to have been found guilty of genocide...

"We should take pride in the fact that, from UK support to secure his arrest, to the prison cell he now faces, Britain has supported the 30-year pursuit of justice for these heinous crimes."

Karadzic, a former psychiatrist, was president of the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War in the 1990s.

After the war, he hid for years - masquerading as an expert in alternative medicine - before his eventual arrest in Serbia in 2008.

In November 2017, former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic was sentenced to life in prison on similar charges of war crimes and genocide. A ruling in an appeal against his conviction is to be announced next month in The Hague.

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May 13, 2021 at 02:45AM

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57090123