Justice at last for the mothers of Srebrenica

Liljan Zelen-Karadzic woke up with a bad feeling yesterday. "As the phone rang, I knew something was wrong," she said.

The wife of the former psychiatrist, poet (dreadful), and wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, was right to have a bad feeling. Her husband, responsible for the genocide of the Bosnian people, including 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica 13 years ago this month, was finally caught by Serb security forces after an alleged foreign tip-off.

It had taken more than a decade to find the 'Osama bin Laden of Europe', who had eluded even the intrepid former chief investigator at The Hague, Carla del Ponte. How she searched for him – following leads he was dressed as a woman in a mountain village in Montenegro, or protected by monks in monasteries. How aghast she was when Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb

president, died in his cell before justice could get her clutches in him.

A Hollywood movie starring Richard Gere (straight to video!) was even made about the hunt for Karadzic.

When I think of Karadzic, I have a strong memory of the scent of pine: of several trips over the many years of war to Pale, the tinpot so-called Republika Sprksa where he reigned. How many times I caught sight of his ridiculous bouffant, heard his roaring laughter, and his idiotic statements about destroying Sarajevo, the city where he had once lived and taught.

Now, let us go back in time: April, 1992, the barricades go up in Sarajevo, the phone lines get cut, the water and electricity goes off and one bakery operates. Food disappears, as does money from the banks.

Karadzic and his Sarajevo University cronies retire to