Simon Jenkins: The concept of international justice will be on trial, too

Serbs will now look to The Hague for a kind of closure, but it is always better for a nation to seek atonement within itself The capture of Radovan Karadzic is unqualified good news. Despite yesterday's queue of Balkan pundits eager to destroy any hope of his getting an unadulterated trial, he was half the duumvirate that oversaw the worst atrocities committed on European soil in half a century. The other half, Ratko Mladic, is still on the run. Quite what Karadzic's defence might be is obscure, unless it is that brutality, revenge and the fog of war have long been commonplace in the Balkans. It is not an argument that will appeal to the thousan ds of Muslim and Croat victims of his fraudulent Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Atrocities also committed against Serbs by Croats, notably in Krajina, in no way excuse the... [read full story]