The Butcher's Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World's Most Successful Manhunt

by Julian Borger

Overview

Now updated and in paperback, the gripping story of how—and against what odds—the perpetrators of Balkan genocide were subjected to the most successful manhunt in history.

Written with a thrilling narrative pull, The Butcher's Trail chronicles the pursuit and capture of the Balkan war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Borger recounts how Ratko Mladić—now on trial in The Hague—and recently convicted Radovan Karadžić were finally tracked down, and describes the intrigue behind the arrest of Slobodan Milošević, the Yugoslav president who became the first head of state to stand before an international tribunal for crimes perpetrated in a time of war. Based on interviews with former special forces soldiers, intelligence officials, and investigators from a dozen countries—most speaking about their involvement for the first time—this book reconstructs a fourteen-year manhunt carried out almost entirely in secret.
Indicting the worst war criminals that Europe had known since the Nazi era, the ICTY ultimately accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590518984
Publisher:	Other Press, LLC
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Julian Borger is the diplomatic editor for The Guardian. He covered the Bosnian War for the BBC andThe Guardian, and returned to the Balkans to report on the Kosovo conflict in 1999.  He has also served as The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent and its Washington bureau chief. Borger was part of theGuardian team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism for its coverage of the Snowden files on mass surveillance. He was also on the team awarded the 2013 Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) medal and the Paul Foot Special Investigation Award in the UK.

Read an Excerpt

Genocide challenges our idea of what it is to be human. The acts perpetrated against innocent victims are so grotesque and disturbing we recoil from their contemplation. We prefer them to be either far away or long ago. What happened in the countries of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1999 ripped all that insulation away. The mass murders took place in supposedly modern Europe, a continent that flattered itself in thinking it had evolved beyond such savagery.  For millions of Europeans, it was a holiday spot, dotted with resorts along azure seas, yet suddenly it was a war zone on the evening news. Almost immediately, the rest of Europe began to distance itself, like neighbors of a dying household. Shutting their doors and windows, they convinced themselves that if they looked the other way, they would never catch the disease.  Western politicians diagnosed “ancient ethnic hatreds” let loose by the fall of communism as the cause of the bloodshed. It was one of a litany of excuses for not getting involved, and it explained nothing.

The history of the ethnic communities that made up Yugoslavia had indeed been marked by sporadic bouts of violence, but those eruptions had been interspersed by long periods of peaceful coexistence. Exactly the same could be said of most regions of Europe’s richly diverse and turbulent continent. Yet if the English herded the Scottish into concentration camps, or if the Spanish committed mass murder against the Catalans or Basques in the late twentieth century, a history of “ancient ethnic hatreds” would seem a grossly inadequate explanation. As it is for the Balkans.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Introduction xi

1 Operation Amber Star 1

2 Operation Little Flower 25

3 A High Expectation of Violence: The SAS in Bosnia 45

4 Manhunting the Pentagon Way 77

5 The Hunt in Croatia 101

6 Gorillas and Spikes 127

7 The Tracking Team 151

8 The Strange Death of Dragan Gagovic 181

9 The Spymaster of the Hôtel de Brienne 197

10 Slobodavia: The Fall of Miloševic and the Unraveling of Serbia 221

11 Radovan Karadzic: The Shaman in the Madhouse 247

12 The Old Man in the Farmhouse: Mladic on the Run 283

13 The Legacy 309

Acknowledgments 333

Chronology 337

Abbreviations 345

Notes 347

Bibliography 370

Index 374

Photo Credits 400

Editorial Reviews

In Butcher’s Trail, Julian Borger, an award-winning Guardian journalist, tells the full story of the ‘world’s most successful manhunt’ for the first time. He unearths stunning details about how it all came about and traces the pursuit of the Balkan butchers with film-worthy narrative flair. Written like a thriller, there are tragic and even comic moments — like when U.S. forces hoped to wear a gorilla suit to distract their quarry, or when British soldiers grabbed the wrong set of twins…More than just a riveting tale, Borger’s book is a thoughtful reflection on the mixed legacy of the war crimes tribunal and the challenge of bringing even a semblance of justice to a land traumatized by ethnic conflict.” —FOREIGN POLICY 

From the Publisher

12/01/2015
After covering the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Borger (diplomatic editor, The Guardian) delves into the frustrating manhunt to track down accused war criminals. Follow a recently formed Polish commando unit making the first arrest, Germany in military action for the first time since World War II, and a reluctant French Force, along with British and American special-op units, as they work with, and against, local police and intelligence units to track down the ICTY's most-wanted fugitives. The accounts and background decisions of each search and capture are presented in captivating detail often playing out like a true-life spy novel. However, the sheer number of people, territories, and international interests involved can be dizzying. Each individual's accused crimes are described, as are the implications these missions had on future renditions and extractions. In a cruel irony, captives end up housed in one of the most progressive jails in the world, a stark contrast to what the peoples of their respective nations suffered through under their leadership. VERDICT Those with a strong interest in the nations of the former Yugoslavia, covert military operations, and international law and relations will find this work most fascinating.—Zebulin Evelhoch, Central Washington Univ. Lib.

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