Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic arrested after 13 years on the run

One of the world's most wanted war criminals was arrested last night after 13 years on the run.

Radovan Karadzic, blamed for the deaths of thousands in the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War, was seized by security forces in Serbia.

The arrest of the former Bosnian Serb president came on the eve of a meeting of EU foreign ministers who were due to assess Serbia's compliance with demands to hand over war criminals.

Serbian president Boris Tadic is keen to secure full membership of the EU for his country and move it away from Russian influence.

Sources close to the government said Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade. Last night he was undergoing a formal identification process, including DNA testing.

A source from the president's office said last night: 'Karadzic was arrested late
tonight in an elaborate operation of the Serb security services. He has already been handed over to the war crimes panel of the Belgrade district court, where he was questioned by the on-duty judge.

'He is to be handed over to the Hague Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia.

'This is a milestone in recent Serbian history and a clear sign that the new Serbian government is prepared to fully cooperate with the tribunal and the European Union.'

Karadzic, who was elected a Bosnian Serb leader after the disintegration of
Yugoslavia, has been charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder and wilful killing as well as other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims in the Bosnian civil war of the 1990s.

He has been hiding from the international and local authorities since 1995 and the American government offered £2.5million for leads that could lead to his arrest.

Bosnian Muslims celebrate in after the announcement that Karadzic has finally been arrested

He had topped the tribunal's most-wanted list for more than a decade and was said to have resorted to elaborate disguises to elude authorities for years although it was always thought key leaders in power knew his whereabouts.

Karadzic's reported hide-outs included Serbian Orthodox monasteries and mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia.

Some newspaper reports said he had at times disguised himself as a priest by shaving off his hair and wearing a brown cassock.

The three-year Bosnian war was set off when a government dominated by Slavic Muslims and Croats declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992.

The war ended in late 1995 with an estimated 250,000 dead and another 1.8million driven from their homes. Karadzic was indicted twice by the UN tribunal on genocide charges stemming from his alleged crimes against Bosnia's Muslims and Croats.

He is accused of masterminding massacres that the UN war crimes tribunal described as 'scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history'.

Police guard the entrance to the special court in Belgrade, Serbia

Karadzic and his top military commander Ratko Mladic - who remains at large - earned their reputation for ruthlessness during the four-year siege of Sarajevo, which left 12,000 dead and 50,000 wounded, with 85 per cent of the casualties civilian.

But it was their slaughter at the 'safe haven' of Srebenica that confirmed their places in the annals of depravity. There, in July 1995, 8,000 men, women and children were massacred.

Karadzic's indictment alleges that he, acting together with others, committed the crimes to secure control of areas of Bosnia which had been proclaimed part of the 'Serbian Republic' and significantly reducing its non-Serb population.

'This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade,' said the war-crimes tribunal's head prosecutor, Serge Brammertz.

'It is also an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.'

Mr Brammertz said that the date of Karadzic's transfer into the tribunal's custody would be determined in due course.

Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. diplomat who negotiated the Dayton Accords that ended the war, said: 'This is great news. This is the most wanted man in Europe, the Osama Bin Laden of Europe.

'He was the primary intellectual architect of the ethnic cleansing.

'Of course Mladic is still out there, but Karadzic is the most important of the two.'

A man prays during the funeral of 465 Bosnian Muslims in 2007. Eight thousand people were killed in the 1995 massacre - more than half have yet to be buried