Watch video of the UN detention unit

The new home of Radovan Karadzic is a 15 square metre cell in the UN detention unit at The Hague. It is spotlessly clean and has a large, albeit barred, window with a blind.

The conditions are certainly better than those endured by the inmates of the concentration camps that the Bosnian Serbs set up in the summer of 1992. Detainees at The Hague are not beaten, starved or tortured, or forced to commit hideous atrocities upon one another.

The rooms are so comfortable that the centre has been dubbed “The Hague Hilton”. There is a plentiful supply of clean sheets, bed clothes and fresh towels. Nor is there any need to bang on the door to get a warder’s attention: each cell has an intercom to speak to unit staff.

UN officials said that despite the horrific crimes committed in the Yugoslav wars there was no ethnic animosity between the inmates. Their wives sometimes travelled together to The Hague. “The atmosphere at the unit is very convivial and peaceful. Irrespective of their ages, or their problems, they look out for each other.”

Detainees are woken early in the morning, especially if they are due in court for the first hearings, which begin at 8.30am. Otherwise they may spend their time in the communal areas, which offer cable television from the Balkans, local language newspapers, table football and backgammon. Computers are provided, although without an internet connection. There is a kitchen so inmates can prepare their own food. Inmates can receive visits from friends, family or lawyers during the day. There is plenty of opportunity for sport at the unit’s gym. However all teams are mixed and no ethnically based groupings are allowed. Those preferring solitary pursuits may walk for an hour in the open air.

Spiritual needs for inmates are catered for and they may receive visits from Orthodox and Catholic priests and an imam. The unit also offers classes in computer skills and English. There are occupational therapy classes in ceramics. “What they make would not get into the Louvre, but it is presentable,” a UN source said. There are facilities for conjugal visits and at least one inmate has conceived a son in the unit. The former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was best man at the wedding in the unit of Predrag Banovic, a former guard at Keraterm concentration camp.

Adam LeBor is the author of Complicity with Evil: The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide.

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