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Hundreds (instead of
thousands) attend the funeral of Radovan Karadzic's mother in
Montenegro
Saturday, May 07, 2005
NIKSIC, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - Family, friends and followers of UN war crimes suspect former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic attended his mother's funeral on Saturday in Montenegro. Jovanka Karadzic, 83, died Thursday after a short illness in a hospital in the northwestern Montenegrin town of Niksic, where she was buried Saturday at the city cemetery. Karadzic's wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic, his daughter Sonja, brother Luka and other relatives were among hundreds of people attending the funeral service conducted by the top Montenegro priest, Bishop Amfilohije. But there was no sign of Karadzic. A group of young men at the burial wore T-shirts with Karadzic's picture and an inscription saying "Serbian hero." No police were visible near the burial site. Karadzic was indicted in 1995 by the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for genocide and crimes against humanity for the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim boys and men in the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, as well as for the siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during the 1992-95 war. Karadzic, along with Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Ratko Mladic, tops the Hague tribunal's list of fugitives. Karadzic is believed to be hiding somewhere in Serb-held Bosnia and has dodged several attempts by NATO peacekeepers there to arrest him. Mladic allegedly is hiding in Serbia. During the funeral service, Bishop Amfilohije, who is one of the top dignitaries of the Serbian Orthodox Christian Church, said "we are here to bury the honourable mother and wife from the honourable Montenegrin house of Karadzic." Bishop Amfilohije also quoted Karadzic's mother as once telling him she would "rather kiss my son's dead forehead but see him remain loyal to true Christian faith and his people." "I would be a miserable mother if he were alive but a traitor to God and his people," the bishop quoted Jovanka Karadzic as saying of her son. Karadzic's brother Luka said that "our mother's greatest grief today is that her first joy, her oldest son, could not say the final good bye instead of me." Serbia-Montenegro and Serb-held Bosnia face immense international pressure to arrest Karadzic and Mladic before the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre later this year. © The Canadian Press
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