Genocide Suspect Buried As A Hero

Carrying candles and portraits of former leader Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serbs gave a hero’s funeral Sunday to another war crimes suspect one killed resisting arrest by NATO.

About 2,000 people attended the funeral in the northwest town of Prijedor for Simo Drljaca, the 50-year-old former police chief.

Drljaca had been indicted for complicity in genocide for his part in running some of the Bosnian Serbs’ most notorious detention camps for Muslims and Croats at the start of the war in 1992. He was killed Thursday near Prijedor by British soldiers who said he fired on them.

NATO troops arrested another suspect, Milan Kovacevic, without incident. He now awaits trial by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

Kovacevic is said to have organized the transport of prisoners to camps while Drljaca reportedly had a more active role in running them.

Karadzic, the Bosnian Serbs’ war-time leader, is the top war crimes suspect and has not been apprehended. He was forced out of office by international officials but still retains considerable influence and the loyalty of Bosnian police.

The Serbian Orthodox funeral was carried live on Bosnian Serb TV and radio. Drljaca’s coffin was covered by a Serb flag.

Mourners included Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb member of the country’s joint three-man presidency, and a key aide to Karadzic. Biljana Plavsic, the Bosnian Serb president, has also bitterly criticized the first NATO operation against war crimes suspects, but she was not at the funeral.

The rhetoric was sharply anti-NATO, with some Serbs accusing NATO troops of shooting Drljaca in the back.

“They killed a patriot, without an investigation and without a trial,” declared the deputy Bosnian Serb interior minister, Milenko Karisik. “They killed him perfidiously, from the back, because they didn’t dare to look him in the eyes.”