“The Butcher’s Trail” with Guardian Diplo. Editor Julian Borger, New America DC

Following the Balkan wars of the 1990s, it initially appeared that the warlords responsible for genocide and other mass atrocities would get away with their crimes. They had been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia but western capitals did not want to take the risk of arresting them. The story of how that policy changed and the Hague Tribunal was saved from irrelevance is little known, but it was a turning point in international humanitarian law. By 2011, all 161 war crimes suspects on the Hague list had been accounted for, many of them tracked down by an adhoc coalition of special forces and intelligence agencies from the US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, and France. It ultimately became the most successful manhunt in modern times.

In his new book The Butcher’s Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World’s Most Successful Manhunt, Julian Borger recounts the sleuthing and cat-and-mouse spy games of the pursuit, and asked whether the gains made against impunity for mass atrocities are now unravelling. The lessons are relevant today, as war crimes are committed daily in Syria, and American special forces hunt terrorists across the globe.

Julian Borger is the diplomatic editor of The Guardian. He covered the Bosnian War and the 1999 Kosovo conflict for the BBC and The Guardian. Borger was a member of the Guardian team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism for covering the Snowden files on mass surveillance, and which was also awarded the 2013 Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) medal and the Paul Foot Special Investigation Award in the UK.

New America is pleased to welcome Mr. Borger for a discussion of his book and the manhunts for Balkan war criminals.

Copies of Borger’s book will be available for purchase by cash, check, or credit card.

Join the conversation online using #ButchersTrial and following @NatSecNAF.

There will not be a live stream available for this event.

Participants:

Julian Borger 
Diplomatic Editor for The Guardian
Author, The Butcher’s Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World’s Most Successful Manhunt

Moderator:
Peter Bergen
Vice President, New America
Director, International Security Program, New America