BELGRADE, Serbia — He was on the run for seven years, the last Serbian fugitive sought by the United Nations’ Balkan war-crimes tribunal.
Goran Hadzic, 53, the former leader of Croatia’s ethnic Serbs, was arrested Wednesday by black-masked Serbian secret police in a hilly forest as an accomplice delivered cash to him.
The arrest was hailed as the symbolic closure of a horrific chapter in Balkan history and an important step toward Serbia’s joining the European Union. It came less than two months after the capture of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic.
Hadzic was a warehouse worker in 1991 when Yugoslavia broke up and Croatia’s minority Serbs rose in opposition to the country’s independence. He swiftly gained prominence through his links to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s secret police, taking charge of an ethnic Serbian ministate created by the brutal expulsion of non-Serbs from one third of Croatia’s territory.
The Hague tribunal indicted Had zic in 2004 on 14 charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, among them the murder, torture, deportation and forcible transfer of Croats and other non-Serbs.
