Ratko Mladic was arrested today in Lazarevo, Serbia ending a sixteen year long manhunt (as predicted in our Year In Review article). He was the Serbian military commander responsible for the Srebrenica massacre in which over 7,000 Muslims were murdered, and has been labeled Europe’s most wanted war criminal.
The two most notorious fugitive war criminals are now former leader of Serbs in Croatia, Goran Hadzic and Ugandan commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony.
Goran Hadzic is responsible for the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs in Croatia from 1991-1993, and is the last war criminal indicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia still at large. Hadzic commanded the execution of 264 hospitalized prisoners of war in November of 1991, and oversaw the murder of hundreds of other non-Serbs in Croatia throughout his tenure as president of the attempted Republic of Serbian Krajina.
Joseph Kony, an ethnic Acholi, has commanded the LRA in a fight against current Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni for the past 25 years , after Museveni overthrew former Ugandan president, and ethnic Acholi, Milton Obote. The LRA is infamous for kidnapping children throughout the region and forcing them to work as prostitutes or child soldiers. Kony was indicted by the I.C.C. in .
Hadzic and Kony are the most wanted fugitive war criminals despite Omar al Bashir and Moammar Gaddhafi not yet being brought to justice, because as sitting heads of state, Bashir and Gaddhafi are not technically fugitives.
