26/05/2011 President
Strasbourg, 26.05.2011 - “The information according to which the Serbian authorities have arrested the former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic is great news for the future of Serbia, for law and justice and the fight against impunity,” the President of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said today.
He paid tribute to the Serbian authorities for the arrest, stressing that he had repeatedly expressed his confidence in the authorities’ efforts to do everything possible to apprehend the remaining indictees of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He encouraged the authorities to spare no efforts to also arrest Goran Hadzic, the former leader of the Croatian Serbs, and bring him before the ICTY.
Paying tribute to the memory of the thousands of victims of the Srebrenica massacre, the siege of Sarajevo and many other atrocities, the PACE President expressed relief that the day when justice can at last be done had come an important step closer. “Only when all those responsible for such atrocities will answer for their crimes, can justice at last be done,” he said.