The ex-leader of Croatian Serb rebels, Goran Hadzic, who was arrested Wednesday in Serbia was the last remaining fugitive on the UN war crimes court's wanted list in the Balkans,.
Hadzic, considered more of a footnote in the history of the bloody conflicts that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s, was thrust into the spotlight as the last fugitive after the arrest of wartime Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic less than two months ago.
Hadzic, 52, was the last of the 161 people indicted by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to be caught.
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Soon after Mladic's arrest a joke began doing the rounds in Belgrade portraying Hadzic as the last man standing in the popular "Survivor" television show.
While Serbia has carried out several searches this year in the homes of alleged Hadzic helpers, the main effort had always been focused on Mladic.
With his arrest manpower was freed up and Hadzic was quickly tracked down in the idyllic mountain region of Fruska Gora near the northern city of Novi Sad. RTS state television reported he was arrested in a forest near the Krusedol village. The village is home to a famous Serbian Orthodox monastery, a popular tourist destination known for its icons.
Hadzic is wanted on charges that Croatian Serb troops under his command killed 250 Croats and other non-Serbs taken from a hospital in Vukovar after the city fell to Serbian troops following an almost three-month siege in November 1991.
The siege of Vukovar and the subsequent massacre is one of the darkest periods in the 1991-95 Croatian war.
Hadzic, a former warehouse employee at an agricultural plant and a member of the Yugoslav League of Communists since his youth, rose to become president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) in Croatia between 1992-1993.
Chosen for the post with the backing of late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, Hadzic was seen as a "yes man" who wielded little real power compared with other wartime Serb leaders.
At the head of the RSK, established by rebel Serbs who opposed Croatia's proclamation of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Hadzic is held responsible for a campaign of terror against Croats and other non-Serbs in the border region between Serbia and Croatia.
He faces 14 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes for the murders of hundreds of people and the deportation of tens of thousands Croats from the area he controlled.
The 10-page indictment also details how Hadzic let the feared Arkan's Tigers paramilitaries of notorious warlord Zjelko Raznatovic beat, torture and kill non-Serb civilians held by units under Hadzic's control.
At the end of the conflict in Croatia, Hadzic moved to Novi Sad in Serbia's northern Vojvodina province bordering Croatia. Hadzic, a father of three, worked there as a senior advisor in the state-owned NIS oil company.
He remained in that position until 2004 when he fled just hours after the UN court revealed the existence of a secret indictment to the Serbian authorities.
