Monsters deserving justice

THE capture of mass murderer Radovan Karadzic was due as much, if not more, to concerns about Serbia's economic links to the European Union than to a desire for justice, but that's no reason not to celebrate.

Karadzic, who is credited with coining the expression "ethnic cleansing" had been indicted along with his sidekick Ratko Mladic by the UN War Crimes Tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity. According to the UN indictment "Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians were persecuted on national, political and religious grounds throughout the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. "Thousands of them were interned in detention facilities where they were subjected to widespread acts of physical and psychological abuse and to inhumane conditions. "Detention facility personnel who ran and operated the Omarska, Keraterm and Luka detention facilities . . . intended to destroy Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat people as national, ethnic, or religious groups and killed, seriously injured and deliberately inflicted upon them conditions intended to bring about their destruction." Further, the indictment says, between April 1992 and July 1995, the men were "criminally responsible for the unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship." Historically, it is the sort of charge sheet that might have been drawn up against Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong, such is the enormity of the crimes committed by Serbs fighting for the self-declared Republic of Srpska, with the backing of President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic died two years ago after playing with the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague for nearly five years. Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy who brokered the Dayton accords that brought peace to the warring factions in Bosnia in 1995 said of Milosevic's death: "Justice wasn't cheated this morning. Justice was served by the existence of this tribunal, the exposure of his crimes and the fact that he ended his days in jail." The targets of the murderous campaign of hate waged by Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic were Muslims. That campaign was brought to an end by the US and the UK. Without those nations, thousands more Muslims would have been slaughtered, though this reality is rarely mentioned throughout the Islamic world. While Karadzic's capture is rightfully being celebrated, it is worth recalling that just a week ago, another group of Muslims were celebrating the release of another murderer. Samir Kuntar, a terrorist who had brutally slain a four-year-old girl's father in front of her, before killing her, was cheered in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories when he and four others were released from Israeli prisons. Kuntar and his colleagues in crime had been held in prisons where they received regular visits from international aid groups and human rights organisations. They were exchanged for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers who had been captured alive. Kuntar's crimes were horrific by any measure. He and three others took four-year-old Einat Haran hostage with her father Danny after seizing them in their home in the coastal city of Nahariya. Danny's wife Smadar, who had hidden in a crawlspace, accidentally smothered their other child, two-year-old Yael, while muffling her crying. Failing to find them, Kuntar and his associates rushed their two captives to the beach where Danny was shot in front of Einat, then held under water to ensure he was dead. Witnesses then watched as Kuntar swung his rifle butt, smashing the little girl's head against the rocks until she was dead. On his release, he was unrepentant, just as there are other terrorists still held in Israeli prisons who take pride in their murder of civilians, men, women and children, and who will, in time, probably be released to heroes' welcomes in return for the remains of other soldiers who were captured alive. Among them, one day, will be a former Palestinian Authority TV newsreader Ahlam Tamimi, who in October 2003 was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences for her role in the 2001 bombing of Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in which 15 men, women and children died. When she is released, as seems inevitable if a killer like Kuntar can go free, will anyone ask why her acts of premeditated murder were not considered to be crimes against humanity, or, as they targeted Jews, attempts at genocide? How rotten, how corrupt is the United Nations, when it pursues the killers of members of one religious group and ignores the murders of members of another, even censoring the Israelis when they attempt to strengthen their security measures to prevent further attacks on civilians? True justice is blind, not one-eyed.