Two Auckland sisters who lived through the siege of Sarajevo are today relieved at the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the man who turned theirs and hundreds of thousands of lives into a misery.
The Serb military leader, on the run for 16 years, faces charges of genocide in ordering torture, rape and the slaughter of 8000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.
Atka Reid and Hana Schofield lived through the siege of Sarajevo and have just had an account of their experiences, Goodbye Sarajevo: A true story of courage, love and survival ( www.goodbyesarajevo.com ) published in London.
Hana, who was 12 at the time, is now an Auckland lawyer, while older sister Atka is a graphic designer.
They woke to the news that Mladic had been caught.
"There was a sense of relief, the first step in the process of justice and hopefully it will provide closure for a lot of families in Bosnia," Hana said.
Mladic being free rankled with them, and many others.
"What it does, all those atrocities carried out and the key figures not bought to trial, it delays everything.
"People cannot move forward as they like to. It is almost if what happened is not recognised by the world."
Hana and Atka hope for a speedy trial at The Hague.
"He was a villain who was responsible for carrying out hundreds and thousands of murders in Bosnia. He needs to be bought to trial."
Hana will watch it from a distance, feeling no need to go to the trial when it gets under way.
"There are thousands of other Bosnian families who have been through a lot worse. Those families do have to live through the loss.
"Hopefully they will be found guilty very soon."
It was important, she said, that international law was far reaching and had a long memory.
This would send a message to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that killing civilians was being noticed and that "he will not get away with it".
Goodbye Sarajevo was one of the star books at the recent Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.
The book tells how Hana was put on one of the last United Nations buses out of Sarajevo and had to live as a young teenage refugee in Serbia.
Atka remained in the city and the book tells of her battle for survival.
She found work as a translator in a radio station and met and fell in love with a New Zealand photojournalist, Andrew Reid.
They later married and have two sons.
Hana also lives in New Zealand with husband James.
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Link to the Stuff.co.nz story...
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