Two U.N. war crimes tribunals appealed to the Security Council on Wednesday for support in pressuring Serbia and Rwanda to do more to hunt down their most-wanted fugitives.
Judge Dennis Byron, the Rwanda tribunal's president, and prosecutor Hassan Jallow said they are seeking to secure the arrests of 13 remaining fugitives. That tribunal is trying the alleged masterminds of the 100-day Rwandan genocide in 1994 in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.
Jallow said the tribunal has delivered more than 30 judgments, including five acquittals, and there are more than two dozen trials under way.
Judge Fausto Pocar, president of the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, vowed that it would "not close its doors before all of those fugitives are tried."
That tribunal indicted in absentia former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Rako Mladic for genocide and crimes against humanity. They are accused of allegedly masterminding Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II: the 1995 slaughter of thousands of Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said Karadzic, Mladic and two other fugitives are "within reach of the authorities in Serbia" who could "do more to locate and arrest them."
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is president of the 15-member Security Council this month, told reporters that both tribunals have made progress and many of the council members have called on nations to cooperate with them.
"It is very important that there is no impunity for crimes committed against humanity," he said. "We all remember, of course, the terrible things that happened in the former Yugoslavia ... or the terrible things that happened in Rwanda. There is a determination on the part of council members to assist the tribunals to efficiently finish their work as soon as possible."
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