Serbia captures fugitive Karadzic

Although The Hunting Party's trailer announces it as being "based on a true story", the Bosnia-set movie is actually very loosely based on the events depicted in an Esquire magazine article by American journalist Scott Anderson. Published in October 2000 under the title "What I Did on My Summer Vacation", the article talks about a group of five Western war-reporters (in addition to Anderson, the group consisted of two more Americans, Sebastian Junger and John Falk, as well as Dutchman Harald Doornbos and Philippe Deprez from Belgium) who reunited in Sarajevo during April 2000 and over some drinks at a local bar one night decided to make a half-hearted attempt at catching the accused war criminal and fugitive Radovan Karad�i?. In addition to alcohol, the starting point for their "manhunt" was an article in local weekly newsmagazine Slobodna Bosna notorious for sensationalist reporting that claimed Karad�i?, along with his heavily armed security detail, had been spotted in the village of ?elebi?i in Republika Srpska (Serbian entity in Bosnia) near the border with Montenegro.

Before going into ?elebi?i, the party of five journalists first came to the nearby town of Fo?a where they inquired about the safety of their trip among the locally stationed UN personnel. They soon caught the eye of a well-connected local UN officer from Ukraine who became convinced they were a covert crew sent in to apprehend Karad�i? and decided to help them out by putting them in touch with a supposedly high-ranking Serbian secret police officer. The journalists decided to play along, and after returning from an uneventful visit to ?elebi?i, they arranged a meeting with the Serbian secret policeman who, too, was convinced they were a CIA Black Operations team. He also claimed to have an intimate knowledge of Karad�i?'s movements and whereabouts and in return for ratting him out he wanted American passports for himself, his wife, and their four kids, as well as a cut of the bounty prize.

Despite being not at all convinced of the honesty and sincerity of either the Ukrainian UN officer or the Serbian secret policeman, the journalists decided to play along even further, thus setting in motion an interesting chain of events that in the end led to local NATO officials, American embassy personnel, and apparently even top American security officials from overseas getting involved.

Scott Anderson's conclusion at the end of the article was that UN and NATO not only exhibit precious little interest in actually finding Karad�i?, but they also actively sabotage any such meaningful attempt from within their own ranks.