War Criminal’s Capture Imminent
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Serbian government was last night negotiating the surrender of the leading Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect, Ratko Mladic, amid contradictory reports over whether he was already in NATO custody.
The talks intensified with the approach of next week’s E.U. deadline for Serbia to show better cooperation with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
But the Serbian government denied reports that Mr. Mladic was on his way to an American base in Bosnia, from where he would be flown to The Hague.
“The news about Ratko Mladic is not correct,” a government spokesman, Srdjan Djuric, said. “It is a manipulation which damages the [Serbian] government.”
Senior British sources also said it was “a false alarm” while the American Department State of said: “He continues to be a fugitive from justice.”
Nevertheless, security sources are certain Mr. Mladic’s days of freedom are over and it is possible the Serbs are undecided how to handle the likely backlash from nationalists at news of his arrest.
Newspapers in Belgrade were full of speculation that Mr. Mladic would be spirited into Bosnia after his arrest to avoid accusations that he had been hiding in Serbia under Belgrade’s protection.
By the afternoon, Serbia’s state news agency, Tanjug, and the main Bosnian Serb agency, SRNA, said the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serb army had been arrested.
Mladic, 63, was indicted in 1995 for genocide in the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, which claimed 12,000 lives, and for orchestrating the massacre in July 1995 of more than 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica – the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
His political boss, Radovan Karadzic, indicted on the same charges, is still at large.
The ability of two major villains from the Bosnian war to evade capture, despite countless NATO raids, is a major obstacle to Serbia’s hopes of integration in Europe.
Without confirming the reports of an imminent arrest, Vladeta Jankovic, who is an adviser to the prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, said efforts to find Mr. Mladic were “in full swing.”
