By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent

I never thought I’d see the day that Ratko Mladic was finally brought to justice.

I witnessed his Bosnian Serb underlings at their most cruel and barbaric, reporting in 1992 on the horrific detention centers in which Bosnian Muslims were incarcerated – bringing back memories of Nazi concentration camps in scenes we thought we would never again witness in Europe.

The sheer terror in the faces and voices of those herded behind the wire is something I will never forget.

Over the years, I have kept in touch with many of those who survived the camps. Dr. Idriz Merdzanic, a doctor in one of the camps I reported from, is one of the bravest men I have ever met.

He took photographs of some of the appalling injuries he had to treat in the Trnopolje concentration camp in northern Bosnia and, in the face of enormous personal danger, gave the film to my ITN colleague Penny Marshall to smuggle out.

He’s now in Germany, where he started a new life. He still sends me Christmas cards, asking about my family. He says he’d like to return one day, but the scars from that period will take a long time to heal.

The television reports from Marshall and I were the first to expose the horror of the camps set up by the Bosnian Serbs. (Click on the video link above to see the original 1992 report).

Kevin Coombs / Reuters file

International forensic experts examine dozens of bodies, believed to be some of the 8,000 missing persons who fled Srebrenica in July 1995, in a mass grave in the Serb entity of Pilicer, Bosnia in a September 18, 1996 file photo.

I still recall roaming around the camp, trying to interview the terrified prisoners. They desperately wanted to talk, to expose what was happening there, but they – and I – knew that for them to speak too openly was a death sentence, as their guards watched and listened. So they spoke in coded English, only hinting at the horrors they faced.

I worried terribly afterward that I might somehow have made things worse for them, but have been enormously grateful over the years for all the letters from former inmates saying how things improved after the worldwide outrage that followed our reports – that our reports helped save lives.

I never met Mladic, I just saw his handiwork. 

The Bosnian Serb wartime army commander is facing international war crimes charges, including some stemming from the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. After 16 years on the run, he was arrested Thursday in a northern Serbian village. A Belgrade court ruled on Friday that he will be extradited to a U.N. tribunal at the Hague.

Over the years, I also met many of those who had tried to track him down. In Iraq I came across a group of British special forces who had been tasked with grabbing Europe’s most wanted man in the mid-‘90s. They described weeks of undercover work in Serbia, which culminated in their grabbing the wrong man – an innocent farmer, whom they quickly released after arranging some quick compensation for the rattled Mladic lookalike.

Those I have kept in touch with had largely given up hope that Mladic would ever be found. His capture probably reflects the changing political situation in Serbia. It’s hard to imagine that his whereabouts were not known over the years. His capture will never erase the appalling memories of those who suffered and lost loved ones at the hands of his thugs, but it will bring some relief that he is at last to face justice.

Related links:

See a Channel 4 report on Ian Williams’ reporting on the concentration camps in 1992: Ratko Mladic arrest: life-saving journalism

Opportunity lost: How U.S. backed off in hunt for Mladic

In a major show of force as Iraqi leaders weigh whether to keep U.S. troops in the country beyond the end of the year, followers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr lead a huge rally in Baghdad.

DAVID GRAY / Reuters

A Pakistan national flag flies alongside a Chinese national flag in front of the portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani’s visit to China.

By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – At breakfast at my hotel I was having trouble with the cornflake dispenser. It was one of those tall cylindrical containers with a lever at the bottom that needed to be turned for the cornflakes to tumble out, only the lever was stuck. I gave up in frustration and almost walked into a young woman who’d been observing my dismal efforts.

“Dui Bu Qui,” (“excuse me”), she said, addressing me in Mandarin, before simply opening the top of the container and ladling out her cornflakes.

She then returned to a table of what looked to me like Chinese businessmen. She was by far the smartest-dressed at the table, the translator I assumed, while the men – ruddy faced, a bit rough around the edges, and looking a little uncomfortable in dark suits and ties – were fairly typical of the traders or small town entrepreneurs I’m more familiar with on trips to provincial China.

I looked further around the restaurant. There were several more tables of what looked to me like Chinese businessmen, while at the back, more discretely seated, was a more polished group, Chinese diplomats or bankers perhaps, pouring over some documents. (Possibly the latest photos of the American stealth helicopter downed in the Osama bin Laden raid, one colleague mischievously suggested. The Chinese military is allegedly anxious to get a look at the plans for the sophisticated chopper that was capable of evading radar detection).

The reason I mention this is because this restaurant, in one of Islamabad’s best and most secure hotels, has always been an anthropologists dream.

At any one time the scene provides a wonderful insight into what’s going on, who’s up and who’s down in turbulent Pakistan. Journalists, diplomats, business people and spooks rub shoulders around the buffet table with Pakistani government officials and bearded frontier tribesmen in flowing robes.

On a recent morning, there were several tattooed Western men with shaven heads and bull-necks, some sort of security for one of the aforementioned I assumed, for whom “low-key” was clearly not part of the training.

China, Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend’
It’s been like this over the many years I’ve been coming to Pakistan, and staying at this hotel, but I’ve never seen so many Chinese at the breakfast buffet.

One look at the newspapers lying around the restaurant, and it’s easy to see why the Chinese are so welcome here.

Jason Lee / AP

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, left, is welcomed by Chinese President Hu Jintao for a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.

“China urges US to respect Pak sovereignty,” headlined Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper Thursday. While the Express Tribune declared: “China endorses Pakistan’s response to US raid.”

There has been much Pakistani praise of their “all-weather friend” in Beijing.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has been in Beijing this week and just clinched a deal in which China will provide Pakistan with 50 fighter jets to the tune of -25 million a pop. 

The visit was organized some time back, but China has sought to maximize its diplomatic advantage following Pakistan’s humiliation over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and the subsequent crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations.

“China and Pakistan will remain forever good neighbors, good friends, good partners and good brothers,” according to the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, quoted approvingly in newspapers here.

The authorities in Punjab Province have even declared they will no longer accept aid from the U.S., but only from friends who do no attach strings, read China.

Of course China and Pakistan have long been close, with Beijing allegedly helping in the development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon program, but it has only been more recently that the economic relationship has really taken off. China is pouring cash into Pakistan’s infrastructure and natural resources, and in a December visit the Chinese prime minister announced billions of dollars of proposed investments.

No wonder the crowds around that buffet are looking increasingly Chinese.

Western diplomats, watching from their corner of the restaurant, seemed remarkably relaxed about the budding friendship between the two regional neighbors.

Whatever diplomatic advantage it may be seeking this week, China has welcomed the death of Bin Laden, and has every reason itself to be concerned about Islamic militancy across the mountains from its own Muslim areas. Western diplomats believe its private message to Gilani is likely to have been very different from the public platitudes.

And Chinese economic assistance can be double-edged.

Investment is primarily motivated by China’s hunger for raw materials, and it is frequently accompanied by Chinese labor. Trade between the two countries is also heavily skewed in China’s favor. Pakistani manufacturers cannot compete with the cheap Chinese goods flooding Pakistan’s markets, leading traders to frequently grumble about quality.

Back at the breakfast buffet, the young woman who I’d (almost) bumped into at the cornflake dispenser, rose to leave with her entourage. She and a colleague carried between them a heavy bag that appeared to contain two Chinese tea sets – gifts, I assumed, for their would-be business partners in a country that for the moment needs every friend it can get.