Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader convicted of the massacre in Srebrenica, will be transferred to a UK prison to serve the rest of his sentence, the UK government announced on Wednesday.
“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, 75, who is currently in a United Nations detention unit in the Netherlands, will be moved to an unspecified UK prison.
He was one of the chief architects of the slaughter and devastation of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, the worst European conflict since the Second World War.
Karadzic, as well as former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic orchestrated a mass cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the conflict.
One of the worst atrocities he was responsible for was the mass killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.
In a carefully planned operation, Serb forces transported Muslim men and boys to sites around the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia and gunned them down before dumping their bodies into mass graves.
Karadzic was also the main culprit in the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted for more than three years and left at least 12,000 dead.
He was arrested in 2008 after spending years in disguise, growing an immense beard, and giving lectures on alternative medicine.
Karadzic was convicted by a United Nations court in 2016 of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, later increased to life by appeals judges at the court in The Hague.
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, accused of fomenting deadly conflicts across the Balkans as Yugoslavia crumbled in the 1990s, died in his cell in The Hague in 2006 before judges could deliver verdicts in his trial.
