Hollywood film probes bin Laden, Karadzic manhunts

SARAJEVO, Sep 22: A Hollywood movie being shot in Bosnia about the hunt for a genocide suspect tries to ask the wider question of why wanted men like Radovan Karadzic and Osama bin Laden are still free, its director said on Wednesday.

U.S. director Richard Shepard's thriller ''Spring Break in Bosnia'', based on a true story and starring Richard Gere, tells of a manhunt for a character based on war crimes suspect Karadzic.

Set for release next year, the movie recounts how a group of reporters go to post-war Bosnia on an unofficial mission to find the Bosnian Serb wartime chief.

But just as NATO troops have failed in real life to locate him, the film's manhunters fall foul of big power politics and Balkan intrigue that allow their prey to escape.

''I hope it's asking a bigger question why there are war criminals ... that the world says they want to catch but they don't,'' Shepard said in Sarajevo after a 10-day film shoot which will continue in Croatia.

NATO troops in Bosnia have launched many abortive attempts to arrest Karadzic, sought by the U.N. war crimes court on two counts of genocide stemming from the 1992-95 war. U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte says they are not trying hard enough.

Al Qaeda leader bin Laden is Washington's most wanted man for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that claimed almost 3,000 lives, but some observers say the U.S. lacks the real will to nab him in remote areas of Afghanistan or Pakistan.

''We say we want to catch these people, but are there other things in play that might mean that we really don't want to catch them?'' Shepard asked.

''Osama bin Laden is the most wanted criminal in the world with the largest bounty on his head. Some may question if people have a true interest to catch him,'' he added.

The film's villain is an ''amalgamation'' of Karadzic and binLaden, said Shepard, who also wrote the script.

BALKAN INTRIGUE

''Spring Break in Bosnia'', also starring U.S. actors Jesse Eisenberg and Terrence Howard, is based on a true story of five journalists three American, one Belgian and one Dutch and an article written by one of them, Scott Anderson of Esquire magazine.

Their holiday reunion five years after the war turns into a search in eastern Bosnian mountains for Karadzic and the U.S. 5 million dollars reward. They believe they are hot on the trail with help from a U.N. officer and his Serb source.

But when U.S-led NATO peacekeepers learn of their findings, an American officer assures them ''specialists'' will be taking over yet their quarry is never caught.

For several years, NATO feared a Bosnian Serb backlash if Karadzic was captured. Anderson had asked whether 'specialists' ''had been dispatched to close down a channel that just might achieve that and disrupt the Bosnian 'peace'''.

Other theories abounded in the conspiracy-rich Balkans, with Serbs claiming the U.S. government had guaranteed to Karadzic he would not be tried if he quit public life.

''So, my question is whether people have a true interest, whether America is truly interested in catching him,'' Shepard said. ''There are secrets on all sides, deals made on all sides, dark deals.''

Reuters