Corr) France’s Kouchner compares Karadzic’s, Sudanese president’s situations
Corr) France’s Kouchner compares Karadzic’s, Sudanese president’s situations
309 words
22 July 2008
09:53 am GMT
BBC Monitoring European
English
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(Replacing the word “mandate” in paragraph 6, sentence 1, with “warrant”. A corrected version of the item follows:)
Excerpt from report by French state-funded public broadcaster Radio France Internationale on 22 July
[Newsreader] The first stage of the process which is to lead to his extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal, in the Netherlands, is over: Radovan Karadzic spent the night answering questions from an examining magistrate in Belgrade. The magistrate has not revealed anything about this session. The former political leader of the Bosnian Serbs was arrested yesterday evening, according to the Serbian presidency.
[Passage omitted: background]
The United States and the UN have welcomed this arrest, France too – for Bernard Kouchner, its foreign minister, this is a victory for international justice:
[Kouchner] Firstly international justice, which people were beginning to doubt, emerges from this affair enhanced, and justice in general. Then I am thinking of the victims. I am thinking of all those who no longer had any hope and who had lost those close to them in Srebrenica, in Sarajevo, everywhere, who were living in a very sinister and hazy past.
[Passage omitted: indistinct poorly edited passage]
I am thinking also of Sudan, because Mr Luis Ocampo’s warrant which will perhaps be issued against the Sudanese president, contains the same crimes – crimes against humanity, genocide and mass murder. So human rights campaigners take a little courage from this, telling themselves that in this century of globalization human rights are not completely dead, completely forgotten. I think that this is a really major event and it also means that there are no guaranteed hiding place for criminals, no impunity, no possible escape – a life spent in hiding, only to be arrested.
Source: Radio France Internationale, Paris, in French 0700 gmt 22 Jul 08