Goran Hadzic

Serbia catches the last fugitive from UN justice

There are no demonstrations on the streets of Belgrade for Goran Hadzic, the last suspect wanted by the UN Court in the Hague, who was finally captured this week.

There have been no outpourings of nationalist rage.  In part, this is because even the extremists find it hard to justify the appalling deeds of the Serbian militiamen who were, in theory, under Hadzic's command in eastern Croatia in the early 1990s.

Their savagery was notorious, their motives often blatantly mercenary.

Throughout the Balkan wars, the line between nationalist and criminal activity was frequently blurred, [and not just by Serbs] but it was perhaps especially hard to tell if the militiamen in the Slavonia region were more interested in fighting, or smuggling and profiteering.

In part, too, it is simply because the events of the early 1990s, Vukovar et al, now seem an awfully long time ago, and increasingly irrelevant, and not just to a younger generation of Serbs.