NATO troops raided a remote village in Bosnia's rugged eastern hills last night and arrested a Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive accused of enslavement and rape of Muslim women.
"Radovan Stankovic is now being processed for transfer to The Hague," said Major Scott Lundy, a spokesman for the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR).
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Radovan Stankovic on the NATO warrant for his arrest
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The former elite paramilitary soldier is accused by the UN Hague Tribunal of holding nine Muslim women and girls as young as 12 in what amounted to a brothel for Serb soldiers.
Major Lundy said no one was hurt in the raid by French and German troops.
Villagers said troops blocked all roads into the tiny village of Trebicina and surrounded Stankovic in his house, before he laid down an automatic rifle and gave himself up without a fight after a 12-hour standoff.
The indictment against Stankovic, now 33, says he organized and directed a brutal regime at the Muslim-owned house in the town of Foca for three months early in the 1992-5 Bosnian war.
It says he and fellow soldiers routinely sexually assaulted and raped women and girls there, who could not escape because the area was dominated by Serb soldiers and civilians.
This was the second arrest of a war crimes fugitive in Bosnia in three days and at least the third SFOR raid in the hardline Serb area this year.