EU troops searched the home of a former Bosnian Serb president yesterday and questioned him about the whereabouts of war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.
The former president, Mirko Sarovic, has long been suspected of being part of a support network helping to hide Karadzic, who was the Bosnian Serb president during the 1992-1995 war.
The UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted Karadzic, along with his wartime military commander, with orchestrating the 1995 massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim boys and men from Srebrenica -- Europe's worst carnage since World War II -- and laying a three-year siege to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
NATO support
With support from NATO personnel and the Bosnian Serb police, EU troops began searching Sarovic's home in Lukavica, a Sarajevo suburb, at around daybreak.
"We are looking for information and materials that may lead to the arrest of a person indicted for war crimes," said Major David Fielder, a spokesman for the EU force, known as EUFOR.
The search, which was still in progress by late morning, was "related to the support network of Radovan Karadzic," Fielder said. He did not provide further details.
Sarovic was part of Bosnia's three-member presidency from October 2002 to April 2003. He resigned following accusations that he was involved in a local company exporting military equipment to Iraq in violation of UN sanctions.
acquitted
In 2005 he was charged with abuse of office, forgery, organized crime and aiding at-large war crimes suspects but was acquitted last year.
Karadzic disappeared from public view in 1998. He is believed to be hiding in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia or in Serbia.
Karadzic and his wartime military chief, General Ratko Mladic, are the two most-wanted suspects sought by the UN tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands.
NATO and EU peacekeepers have failed to catch him and officials believe that he has a strong network of supporters enabling to remain at large.
In 2005, Bosnian Serb leaders called on Karadzic to surrender, stating that Bosnia and Serbia could not progress politically or economically while he remained at large.
Mladic is believed to be hiding in neighboring Serbia.
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