UN war crimes prosecutor eyes end to long Karadzic trial

It may have taken over two decades but as the verdict looms in the trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, his UN prosecutor says it's never too late for justice.
More than 20 years after the excruciating 44-month siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Karadzic will on March 24 hear whether judges have found him guilty of 11 charges, including two of genocide.
"There have been many important trials in this tribunal, there have been many important judgements, but the one in relation to Karadzic will for sure be one of the most important in the history of the tribunal," Serge Brammertz said.

After former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died in 2006 while on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Karadzic will become the highest level politician to be judged for the atrocities which accompanied the break-up of the country in the 1990s.
That makes the verdict "very important in terms of the responsibility of political leaders for the suffering of their own people," said Brammertz, a Belgian national and seasoned jurist.
Brammertz was only a few months into his post as chief prosecutor at the ICTY when he received a call in July 2008 to say that, after 13 years on the run, it looked like Karadzic was about to be nabbed.

It was a pivotal moment. Over the years since the tribunal was set up by the United Nations at the height of the wars in 1993, everybody had become "very pessimistic" about the chances of tracking the fugitives down.

A date for wrapping up the court had already been set -- 2010.
And yet in every meeting with victims' groups "the number one request" was always to arrest Karadzic and notorious Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic.
As Brammertz took in the news that one of Europe's most wanted men had finally been captured and would be headed for the tribunal in The Hague, he felt the weight of the moment and what it "represented for those thousands of victims waiting for their day.