World affairs editor at The Guardian, Julian Borger, who covered the Bosnian war from Sarajevo and later wrote The Butcher’s Trail, a book about the post-war search for war criminals, told N1 that the most significant manhunts were those of the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

“The manhunt for them lasted far longer than it should have but the upside of this whole story that it was relentless, that is was not called off until these two were found,” Borger said, adding that a total of 161 people were indicted for war crimes and one way or another brought to justice.

He said he was stunned to see that the verdict included genocide in Srebrenica but also surprised that he was not convicted for genocide outside of Srebrenica.

It was also surprising that Karadzic received 40 years in prison while others who took part in the genocide were sentenced for life, while the court accepted that he had political control.

“He gave the orders, he created the environment in which these mass killings happened,” Borger said.

But Karadzic was accused but not convicted for genocide on municipalities like Prijedor and Borger said even if those crimes were not labelled as genocide, they were labelled as crimes against humanity, which is also quite significant.

Asked whether he believes Karadzic will be convicted again, Borger said it would be “unthinkable” for him to be acquitted and that the question is only whether the sentence will be increased to life in prison, as the prosecutors requested.