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Accused Bosnian war criminal located
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-22 10:17
Gen. Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb commander accused of orchestrating Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II, has been located in Serbia and authorities are negotiating his surrender, security officials said Tuesday.
In this Dec. 2, 1995 file picture, Bosnian-Serb General Ratko Mladic visits troops in the east Bosnian town of Vlasenica. The war crimes fugitive has been located and authorities are negotiating his surrender, a senior state security official told The Associated Press on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006. [AP Photo] |
Mladic, considered the most ruthless commander of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, "has not yet been arrested," one official who is close to the operation to find Mladic told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not entitled to speak to the media.
Another security official, also demanding anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information and fears of jeopardizing negotiations, confirmed that Mladic's "hiding place has been discovered in recent days."
Both officials refused to specify the exact whereabouts of Mladic's hideout, but the private Beta news agency said the former commander was found on Cer Mountain, some 60 miles west of Belgrade on the border with Bosnia. Beta did not cite its source.
Earlier, the Belgrade-based agency reported that "an operation was in progress to locate" Mladic. It also did not name the source of that information.
Chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte repeatedly has said Mladic is in Serbia and "in the immediate reach of the authorities."
"We have said for the last 10 days that the arrest could take place very quickly," her spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, said in The Hague, Netherlands.
Serbia is under intense pressure from the European Union and the U.S. to capture Mladic, charged by the war crimes tribunal with genocide for allegedly ordering the massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica and for the 1992-95 siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
State news agency Tanjug, quoting Bosnian Serb BN television, earlier reported that the 62-year-old Mladic had been arrested and was "being transported" to the U.S.-run air force base in Tuzla, eastern Bosnia. Mladic was to be flown to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the report said.
But Srdjan Djuric, spokesman for Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, told the AP in a statement that Mladic had not been arrested. He called the Tanjug report a "manipulation" meant to derail the government's efforts to detain him.
The contradicting reports on Mladic started with Kostunica's senior aide, Vladeta Jankovic, predicting earlier Tuesday that Mladic's arrest was imminent.
"Those who are searching have all means and are in full swing" in efforts to capture Mladic, Jankovic said. He said the government wanted to persuade Mladic to surrender.
"This problem has to be solved, and it will be solved in the shortest possible period," he said.
However, Jankovic said he had no information on whether Mladic's hiding place had been located or whether the government was involved in any negotiations for his surrender.
The conflicting reports caused confusion in Belgrade. There have been numerous incorrect reports in the past that Mladic had been located or captured.
Serbia, seeking to establish closer ties with the European Union and NATO, faces renewed international isolation if it fails to extradite Mladic to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague.
EU officials had given Serbia until the end of February — in a week — to hand Mladic over to The Hague and threatened to freeze EU membership talks otherwise.
Hartmann and officials at the EU and NATO said Tuesday they had no information about Mladic's reported arrest.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said he was not aware Mladic had been arrested or detained.
Mladic, who was head of the Bosnian Serb army during the war, is No. 2 on the tribunal's most-wanted list after Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who remains at large. Mladic went into hiding in 2002 after Slobodan Milosevic was ousted as president in 2000.
The State Department has offered $5 million for the capture of Mladic, who was known to have made forays into Belgrade even as recently as a few years ago to dine and to watch soccer games.
Under an indictment last amended in October 2002, the U.N. war crimes tribunal charged the general with 15 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in 1992-95. If convicted, Mladic faces life imprisonment, the tribunal's maximum punishment. The U.N. court has no death penalty.
An estimated 200,000 people died during the Bosnian war and half the country's prewar population of 4 million were displaced.
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