The New York Times

Monday, December 13, 1999

War Crimes Suspects Seen as Living Openly in Bosnia

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON -- As NATO peacekeeping troops enter their fifth year on patrol in the former war zone of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dozens of Bosnians accused of genocide, rape and other war crimes have not only eluded capture, but are also reported to live openly with little fear of arrest.

Western diplomats, human rights advocates and Balkans specialists say much of Bosnia has become a virtual safe haven for war crimes suspects, especially southeastern Bosnia, which is under the command of French peacekeeping troops and is a stronghold of the Bosnian Serbs.

Many of the most notorious suspects are known to live in the French zone, including the former Bosnian Serb civilian leader, Radovan Karadzic, who has been indicted for genocide. In the American zone in northern Bosnia, only three suspects have been arrested since NATO troops arrived in December 1995.

Of the 63 people identified in public indictments for their part in the ethnic violence that convulsed Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, only 14 have been captured by NATO peacekeepers. Twenty-one more have surrendered or have been forcibly apprehended outside Bosnia and taken to the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague. All but two of the dozens left on the loose are ethnic Serbs; the two others are Croats.

The French have not forcibly apprehended any war crimes suspects on their own. Two suspects were captured in their zone, but senior Western officials say those arrests were carried out by German special forces stationed in the sector.

American troops have come under harsh criticism from human rights groups and Balkans experts. The most important suspect they have arrested was a Bosnian Serb commander caught last December a few hours after he crossed into the American sector from the French zone.

The British record stands in sharp contrast. Since Prime Minister Tony Blair came to power in 1997 with a pledge to track down war criminals, the British military has aggressively pursued suspects in western Bosnia. Eleven suspects have been arrested in the British sector; another was killed in a shootout with peacekeepers.

"The worst of the worst war criminals are in the French sector," said Nina Bang-Jensen, executive director of the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington-based group that tries to monitor the whereabouts of war crimes suspects. "It's hard not to conclude that the French have decided to protect these people."

The French government insists that it is eager to apprehend war criminals, but that the mountainous terrain of southeastern Bosnia makes it easier for suspects to hide.

In an interview on Friday, Defense Minister Alain Richard of France denied that French troops had created a safe haven. But he would not discuss details of French involvement in any arrests.

A spokesman for the NATO force in Bosnia, Col. David Raney of the United States Army, rebutted suggestions that French or American troops turned a blind eye to war crimes suspects. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he said, adding that many suspects captured so far were violent and well-armed.

Senior Western officials and human rights groups say indicted war crimes suspects living in the American and British sectors are generally in hiding, moving around to avoid detection.

The most notorious war crimes suspect known to have lived in the American sector, Ratko Mladic, the wartime Bosnian Serb military commander, is said to have left his top-security military headquarters in eastern Bosnia and moved to Serbia more than a year ago because of powerful connections in its capital, Belgrade, and the risk of arrest.

In the French zone, diplomats say, there is evidence that suspects living in the American and British sectors have recently moved in, apparently believing that they will be safe.

Human rights groups charge that the French are failing to arrest war criminals both because of longstanding French sympathy toward the Serbs and because of fear of revenge attacks on French soldiers.

Ms. Bang-Jensen said that while American soldiers might have turned a blind eye, "you didn't see them fraternizing with these criminals."

Earlier in the peacekeeping operation, human rights monitors and other witnesses found French troops walking or drinking alongside war crimes suspects.

Last year, France acknowledged that it had transferred an officer out of Bosnia because of what were described as unauthorized meetings with Dr. Karadzic.

Another French officer is now facing trial on charges that he spied for the government of Yugoslavia and provided it with information on likely military targets in the NATO bombing campaign over Kosovo.

In the one incident in which French soldiers were reported ready to arrest a war crimes suspect in their zone, they ended up killing him in what American and other Western officials view as alarming and suspicious circumstances.

The suspect, Dragan Gagovic, former police chief of the city of Foca, was shot at a French military roadblock while he was coming back from a judo exhibition and was in his car with at least two and as many as five children, none of whom was seriously wounded.

Western officials say Gagovic, 38, had lived openly in Foca despite his indictment.

NATO has insisted that the French soldiers were not to blame for the death and could not avoid violence because it appeared that Gagovic was going to run them down with his car.

But Western diplomats say the death was mysterious given widespread reports at the time that Gagovic was about to surrender to the war crimes tribunal -- a fact, they say, that the French military should have known.

Nikola Kostich, a Serbian-American lawyer from Milwaukee who has represented several defendants before the tribunal, said in an interview that Gagovich contacted him early last year -- on an open phone line, which Western officials say is carefully monitored by French intelligence -- and asked for help in arranging his surrender.