Serbian President Boris Tadic said in Belgrade on Wednesday that the last remaining fugitive wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, former Croatian Serb rebel leader Goran Hadzic, has been arrested in the mountain region of Fruska Gora.
"This morning Goran Hadzic was arrested in the region of Fruska Gora," said Tadic, who called a special news conference to announce the arrest.
Hadzic was arrested by the Serbian intelligence agency BIA, Tadic said.
"Serbia has wrapped up the two most difficult chapters in cooperation with the Hague tribunal and it will continue to meet its international obligations," Tadic said.
He refuted claims and speculations that Serbia had known the whole time where Hadzic was hiding and denied reports that Hadzic had been found near the Krusedol monastery in Fruska Gora or Serbian military facilities located in the vicinity of the monastery.
Hadzic was Croatian Serb wartime leader indicted for crimes against humanity during the 1991-95 Croatian war.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted the former president of the self-styled Serb republic of Krajina in Croatia in July 2004 on 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1991-1995 conflict.
He is charged with a number of crimes committed in eastern Slavonia, including murder and persecution of the Croat and non-Serb civilian population, prolonged imprisonment of civilians in detention facilities where torture, beatings and killing were not uncommon, forcible transfer of tens of thousands of non-Serbs from across the area under his control to make it part of a new Serb-dominated state.
Hadzic, 52, is also indicted for a massacre at the Ovcara farm outside Vukovar, where 250 Croats taken from the town hospital were executed in 1991.
