Peacekeeping forces from the European Union raided the homes of family members of Radovan Karadzic, wanted for war crimes for his involvement in the 1995 massacre are Srebrenica. The whereabouts of Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic have been the point of much debate since the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia. Many international officials, including Carla del Ponte, the former chief war crimes prosecutor for the United Nations, and Raffi Gregorian, a U.S. administrator in Bosnia, have said their capture is anywhere from “one phone call” away to “within a few weeks” way back in June 2007. The homes of Kardzic and Mladic, or their family members, have been raided dozens of times over the past year. Most officials are relatively certain either fugitive is hiding somewhere in Serbia. I can't get out of a parking ticket, and these guys have been on the lam for a decade.
PALE, Bosnia, March 27 (Reuters) – European Union peacekeepers raided homes on Thursday of relatives of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, a genocide suspect on the run from the U.N. war crimes court.
Some 20 vehicles of the EUFOR peacekeeping force, supported by NATO, surrounded a house where Karadzic's wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic lives in his wartime stronghold of Pale, about 16 km (10 miles) southeast of the capital Sarajevo.
Italian carabinieri also searched the homes of Karadzic's daughter Sonja and suspected Karadzic supporter Smiljka Popov in the centre of the mountainous town, said EUFOR spokesman Philip Treloar.
“The aim of the operation is to find material and information that could assist the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) in the search for persons indicted for war crimes,” Treloar said.
The houses have been raided dozens of times since Karadzic went on the run at the end of the 1992-95 war.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague has indicted Karadzic and his military leader Ratko Mladic for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo that claimed some 11,000 lives.
The court says Mladic is hiding in Serbia. Karadzic is believed to be moving between eastern Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro.
