BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: NATO conducts search operation in order to disrupt support network of Radovan Karadzic.

NATO and European Union troops hunting war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic searched the homes of three Bosnian Serbs on Wednesday (August 23). U.S. NATO soldiers blocked off parts of Karadzic's wartime stronghold of Pale, east of Sarajevo, and searched the home of military commander Jovan Skobo, believed to be helping Karadzic, who is sought by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. "NATO forces are here today in Pale at the home of Jovan Skobo to conduct a search operation, said Derek Chappel, a NATO spokesman in Sarajevo. "We are conducting this operation as we have reliable information that he is connected with the support network of Radovan Karadzic. We will conduct this search operation to find any evidence, any information about the support networks and the protective networks around Mister Karadzic. It's an outrage that over ten years after the war these war criminals are still at large and it is essential for BiH to progress towards Partnership for Peace and NATO, that there is full cooperation," he added. Skobo and other occupants of the house did not resist, Chappel said. In a separate operation in Pale, Italian Carabinieri police searched the houses of another wartime commander, Radomir Kojic, and his brother-in-law Radoslav Ilic, Bosnia's SIPA agency said. They also raided Kojic's hotel at nearby Mount Jahorina. Last week, NATO troops conducted a similar raid in the Bosnian Serb administrative centre of Banja Luka in western Bosnia, searching the homes of three suspected Karadzic helpers and of another fugitive war crimes suspect, Stojan Zupljanin. Karadzic and his wartime military commander Ratko Mladic have been indicted for genocide by the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague for the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica. They are among six remaining Serbs or Bosnian Serbs wanted by the U.N. court to stand trial in the Netherlands.

ITN Source | August 24, 2006

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