The Butcher's Trail: The Secret History of the World's Most Successful Manhunt

The Butchers' Trail tells the story of the pursuit and capture of the Balkan war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.

The story of a remarkable manhunt and the courageous action of a handful of ndividuals committed to international justice Fifty years after the Nuremberg trials, the worst genocidal atrocities in Europe since World War II took place during the Balkan Wars, when thousands of Bosnians were massacred. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was formed in 1993, at the height of the wars, to bring justice to those who committed crimes against humanity, and created a list of 161 war criminals. Initially the ICTY was controversial, underfunded, and largely unrecognized — the major powers wanted to obtain justice, yet no one was willing to get their hands dirty. Eventually, because of the relentlessness of the prosecutors, diplomats, and investigators of the ICTY, they received support from the British government, and a team of SAS agents was dispatched into the Balkans, on a manhunt that would last more than a decade. Grippingly reconstructed by The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Julian Borger, In Pursuit of Monsters investigates the heroes, villains, and wider international repercussions of the Bosnian genocide and its aftermath — from war criminals who perfectly embody the banality of evil, to determined ICTY investigators working on a shoestring budget, to politicians and diplomats who radically changed their own foreign policies. Based on interviews with former special forces soldiers, intelligence officials and investigators from a dozen countries - most of them speaking about their involvement for the first time - the book reconstructs a 14-year manhunt carried out almost entirely in secret. The Butchers' Trail details how Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic – both now on trial in The Hague – were finally tracked down, and describes the intrigue behind the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president who became the first head of state to stand before an international war crimes tribunal. The crimes committed were the worst Europe had witnessed since the Nazi era and many of the other suspects tracked down and arrested were responsible for appalling atrocities. The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) - set up in 1993 with few resources or expectations of success - ultimately accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list. It was the most successful manhunt in history. This dramatic reversal in fortune was the story of a handful of dogged individuals, who often defied the indifference of their governments to ensure arrests were carried out. It is also a story of many historic precedents. Polish commandos who carried out the first war crimes arrest for an international court were also on their first operation since the Cold War. Britain's SAS performed the first manhunting mission in Nato's history, and when German special forces joined the pursuit, suffering casualties in the process, it was the first time the country's soldiers had been in action since 1945. The Butchers' Trail recounts the many blunders and betrayals along the way, but the pursuit ultimately proved to be a unique and powerful challenge to a culture of impunity for war crimes that had reigned before the Nuremberg trials and in the half-century since. Finally, the book argues the manhunt's legacy for the enforcement of international justice is now being squandered, as crimes against humanity are once again going un-investigated and unpunished. Julian Borger is The Guardian's Diplomatic Editor. He covered the Bosnian war for the BBC and The 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. Julian was part of the Guardian team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism, for its coverage of the Snowden files on mass surveillance. He was also in the team awarded the 2013 Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) medal and the Paul Foot Special Investigation Award in the UK.