EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

Symbolic end of a brutal era

JUST why it has taken Serbian authorities 16 years to find General Ratko Mladic, the Butcher of Bosnia, remains to be ascertained, but there can be no overstating the importance of his arrest in bringing a symbolic end to the most shameful and savage episode in post-war European history.

Neither can the significance of Mladic's apprehension be over-emphasised, given events unfolding elsewhere. The lesson for the likes of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Syria's Bashar al-Assad and other tyrants whose stock in trade is murder and pillage is that eventually, like Mladic and his cohort Radovan Karadzic, their crimes against humanity will catch up with them and they will be brought to book. Just as the USA caught up with Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

The parallels between the prolonged hunt for bin Laden and the ability of Mladic to evade capture for so long are remarkable. Pakistani authorities unconvincingly claim they had no knowledge of Bin Laden's presence. Similarly, successive governments in Belgrade have pleaded ignorance about Mladic, even though in 2000 he was photographed watching a Chinese-Yugoslav soccer match in the capital, attended his brothers funeral in 2001, and often visited the grave of his daughter after she committed suicide.

Now, on the day European Union Foreign Affairs Commissioner Catherine Ashton was due in Belgrade to discuss Serbia's membership application - which the EU said was contingent on Mladic's arrest - he has been apprehended.

His detention precedes an imminent report by the UN War Crimes Tribunal chief prosecutor expected to be highly critical of Serbia's efforts to find Mladic.

Just who helped Mladic avoid capture for so long should be revealed in due course. As the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, he stands indicted of crimes so grotesque they defy comprehension - the 1995 massacre of 8000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995, which killed 10,000 people, including 3500 children.

Serbian president Boris Tadic has pledged Mladic will be turned over to the UN War Crimes Tribunal within seven days. Nothing must impede that process. Murdering tyrants must learn from Mladic's belated capture that they, too, will never escape their past and sooner or later they will be on their way to prison in The Hague.