The Butcher’s Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World’s Most Successful Manhunt

Guardian diplomatic editor Borger, who covered the Balkan War of the 1990s, vividly relates how the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) tracked down the 161 individuals on its most-wanted list. Many of them lived among sympathetic populations; U.N. peacekeepers initially avoided pursuing war criminals, and U.S. secretary of defense William Cohen also opposed hunting them down. By the time the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords were signed, an air of impunity surrounded the fugitives. The pursuit picked up after President Clinton’s 1996 re-election and the election of Tony Blair as U.K. prime minister, and it was furthered by the efforts of Louise Arbour and Carla Del Ponte, successive heads of the ICTY, who made Croatia and Serbia’s cooperation a condition for significant financial aid and admission into the E.U. Borger recounts the tracking and capture of the “big three”: former Serbian president Slobodan Miloševic´, Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadžic´, and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic´. While noting that efforts to bring some of the perpetrators to justice have suffered setbacks, Borger’s well-researched account nevertheless makes the case that the ICTY’s hard work and persistence represented “the high-water mark of international justice for crimes against humanity.” Maps and photos. [em]Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Jan.) [/em]