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Fugitive Serb general's fate remains a mystery

A Serbian man looks at a newspaper with a picture of Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic in downtown Belgrade on Tuesday. Although some papers reported on Tuesday that Mladic had been arrested, more than a decade after the Srebrenica massacre, Belgrade and the UN war crimes tribunal denied that he had been captured. PHOTO: AFP

The fate of "most wanted" war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic remained unclear yesterday as Serbian media reported he was closer to custody than ever since being indicted for genocide a decade ago, despite the government's denial of his arrest.

Conflicting reports that the ex-Bosnian Serb general was located, arrested or even already on his way to The Hague flurried the Serbian capital late on Tuesday and dominated newspapers yesterday.

However, the Serbian government and police denied he was arrested, as did the chief prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte.

"Mladic arrested," read the headline on the front page of nationalist daily Glas Javnosti, with the general's picture across the page.

"Ratko Mladic and his bodyguard were arrested in a Belgrade apartment, where negotiations on his voluntary surrender had been previously held," the daily said, quoting a source close to Serbian authorities.

But the largest-circulation daily, Vecernje Novosti only said that the noose tightened on the fugitive as "all political preparations for the arrest are completed and Mladic is given only a little bit more time to decide to surrender," or he would be arrested by special police forces.

The influential pro-government Politika daily cited anonymous sources as saying "the operation of capturing Mladic started around 3:30am [2:30am GMT] on Tuesday in New Belgrade, nearby a luxurious hotel," but stopped short of reporting the end of the operation.

Some Serbian and Bosnian Serb media reported that Mladic had been located at Cer mountain, some 100km west of Belgrade, and negotiations were underway on his surrender. All media, however, published the government spokesman's denial that the fugitive had been apprehended.

"The news that Mladic was arrested was not true," Srdjan Djuric said, adding that the report "is manipulation that harms as well as hinders the Serbian government's efforts to bring the cooperation with The Hague [war crimes] tribunal to a close."

Previously, independent Serbian B92 radio quoted several unofficial sources as saying that Mladic, who is wanted for some of the worst atrocities committed during the 1992-'95 war in Bosnia, had been captured in Belgrade before being transferred to an air base at the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla.

The station yesterday still stood by its report despite all the denials.

A former senior secret police official told reporters late on Tuesday that an operation to locate and catch Mladic was still underway, but "so far without any result."

The 62-year-old former Bosnian Serb military chief was indicted in 1995 over the three-and-a-half year siege of Sarajevo and the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys, considered the single worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

Besides Mladic, the only remaining war crimes suspects from the wars that shattered former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s are his wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic, and four other ethnic Serbs.

Reports of his impending capture follow mounting pressure from the international community for Serbia to bring him before the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia.

The Serbian government has been giving strong signals that the net is closing on Mladic after being clearly told by top international officials that talks on its closer ties with the EU would be frozen if Belgrade failed to deliver him by the end of February.

Mladic had lived almost openly in Belgrade until the October 2000 ouster of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic and hid throughout the country under military protection until 2002, according to a recent admission of the authorities.

Del Ponte has kept claiming that he was still in hiding on Serbian soil with the help of the military. Belgrade authorities have persistently denied any knowledge of his whereabouts.
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