As Yugoslavia began its bloody break up in 1991, Slobodan Milosevic dreamed of creating a Greater Serbia, free of pesky non-Serbs.
Certainly the old communist apparatchik tried hard enough, embarking on campaigns of mass murder and mass expulsions, a process given the gruesome euphemism "ethnic cleansing."
Western Europe sat ineffectually on the sidelines, dispatching ineffective diplomatic peace and outnumbered and outgunned peacekeepers, who on one occasion stood disgracefully by while Serb paramilitaries slaughtered the Muslim boys and men they were supposed to be protecting.
It seemed inconceivable that Europe would allow the largest war and mass executions since World War II to continue unchecked. That changed dramatically when the U.S. and NATO intervened, lifting the siege of Sarajevo and chasing Serb paramilitaries out of Kosovo.
The United Nations war crimes tribunal proceeded slowly, sometimes painfully, to track down and try the leaders on both sides responsible for the brutal, indiscriminate killings.
After a five-year trial, Milosevic died in his prison cell in The Hague in 2006, before a verdict could be reached.
Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader described by one U.S. diplomat as the "Osama bin Laden of Europe," was captured in 2008 Belgrade in where he had been quietly selling homeopathic medicine.
The military champion in expelling Muslims from lands Serbia claimed for itself was Ratko Mladic. Thanks to far-right sympathizers and family connections, he eluded capture for 16 years until this May. The preliminary charge against him is the slaughter of 7,500 Muslims in Serbrenica in 1995, considered the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II.
And, finally, the last of the killers being sought by the U.N. has been caught, Goran Hadzic, who destroyed the Croatian town of Vukovar and massacred 200 Croat prisoners of war. Hadzic lasted so long because in addition to being a war criminal he was a common criminal, trafficking in illicit goods.
As awful as their crimes were, these men still attracted sympathy among some elements in Serbia and it is to the credit of President Boris Tadic that he pursued them until they were brought to justice.
The apprehension of the last of the wanted war criminals should remove the obstacles to membership in the European Union and to capital from Western banks. It took long enough, but Tadic is right that Serbia has fulfilled a major moral and legal obligation.