Life imitates art as Bosnian fugitive surfaces in parallel circumstances to feature Hunting Party

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was apprehended last month after more than a decade as a fugitive in an eerily similar scenario to the 2007 film The Hunting Party. Karadzic disappeared in 1996 after he was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Among the charges were genocide against Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians during the Bosnian War. In The Hunting Party, reporters search for a missing Bosnian war criminal believed to be responsible for the systematic killing of tens of thousands of Muslims. The thriller from Emmy-award winning director Richard Shepard (The Matador) is loosely based on the Esquire article What I Did On My Summer Vacation about journalists fronting as a CIA hit squad tracking down a Bosnian war criminal. While the film opened last year, many of the film’s theories have been proven true in recent worldwide headlines.

Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade and is currently on trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Similar to the film, there has been wide speculation about how Karadzic was able to evade capture for so long, including the possibility that he received aid from CIA operatives.

The Hunting Party stars Golden Globe winner Richard Gere (Chicago, Unfaithful) and Oscar nominee Terrence Howard (Crash, Hustle & Flow) and is currently available on DVD.