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(AFP) Aug. 3, 2008 – Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic was protected by the United States until a CIA phone bug caught him breaking the terms of his “deal”, the Serb newspaper Blic reported Saturday, quoting a US intelligence source.
The newspaper claims Karadzic was secretly granted immunity in return for keeping a low profile.
“Karadzic, indicted for genocide and war crimes, was under US protection until 2000, when the CIA intercepted his telephone conversation that clearly proved he personally chaired a meeting of his old political party,” the daily quoted a “well-informed US intelligence source” as saying.
That view partly echoed what Karadzic himself told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in his opening written submission this week. He told The Hague-based court that US peace negotiator in Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, had promised he would avoid trial if he withdrew from public life.
Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade last month after more than a decade as a fugitive and transferred to the ICTY to be tried for alleged war crimes during the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia.
Holbrooke has insisted that no deal with Karadzic existed.
The Blic source said: “I’m not sure there was a written document confirming so, but I do have Holbrooke’s admission of verbal guarantees given to Karadzic from the highest level of the US.”
now isn’t that interesting?
go figure…. we continue to make deals with the evil ones.
There’s no way to know if this one is true. It could be. But it could also be total malarkey.
I have no concept that Holbrook could possibly do this. It sounds totally improbable.
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(BBC News) Oct. 26, 2007 – In a statement, Richard Holbrooke’s office described the allegations of a deal as an “outrageous lie” and said he was “astonished that people would believe a war criminal over the word of the United States or people who brought peace to the Balkans”.
Dejan Anastasijevic, a senior journalist with Belgrade’s Vreme magazine who has spent more than a decade reporting on war crimes, says: “Mr Holbrooke was ready to promise anything to the players of the Bosnian War, including Karadzic and Milosevic.”
“I believe he did calm their fears about the tribunal in many ways, but I find it very difficult to believe he left any paper trail or that there was a written agreement.
But it is significant that The Hague itself does not appear to be ruling out the possibility of a deal.
(Blic) Aug. 1, 2008 – The former chief prosecutor of the Tribunal Carla Del Ponte said that ‘there is a grounded suspicion that such agreement did exist’.
Florence Artman, her spokesperson, wrote in her book titled ‘The Peace and the Punishment’ that in the countries of the West there has never been a sincere intention to have Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic arrested and that the chief supporter of that stance was nobody else but Richard Holbrooke.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."