The New York Times

Monday, March 6, 2000

War-Crimes Figure Is Arrested in Bosnia

By REUTERS

LONDON, March 5 -- British-led NATO forces in Bosnia today arrested a Serb indicted for war crimes supposedly committed at the Omarska detention camp during the 1992-95 war, officials said.

In Brussels, the NATO secretary general, George Robertson, said in a statement that the arrest, the fourth in three months, was a warning to other suspects still at large that "it is time to turn yourself in."

The Belgrade-based news agency Beta said that NATO-led peacekeepers had arrested Dragoljub Prcac, 62, while he was driving with his wife and a neighbor.

Mr. Prcac was the deputy commander of the Omarska camp near Prijedor in northwestern Bosnia, one of the most notorious of the camps set up by Bosnian Serbs for non-Serb civilians in 1992. Nineteen Serbs have been publicly indicted by the United Nations tribunal in The Hague for alleged atrocities committed at the camp. Mr. Prcac is charged with crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and rape.

The trial began last week in The Hague of four other Bosnian Serbs accused of crimes against Muslims and Croats in three Serb-run camps near Prijedor.