Free Republic

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic was arrested in Serbia Thursday after years on the run from international genocide charges, opening the way for the once-pariah state to approach the European mainstream. Mladic, accused of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a brutal 43-month siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-5 war, was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said. "Mladic was handcuffed and whisked away," said the official, who said he been cooperative during the arrest. The formerly burly and widely-feared general was...

SERBIA was plunged into a political crisis last night after Brussels suspended talks leading to EU membership as punishment for failing to arrest one of the most wanted war criminals in Europe. The European Commission said that it was halting negotiations on closer links with Serbia after the deadline to deliver Ratko Mladic to the Hague war crimes tribunal passed on April 30 with the fugitive still in hiding. Relations between Belgrade and the international community plunged to new lows as Carla del Ponte, the chief war crimes prosecutor at the UN, declared that she had been misled by the...

Serbia must choose between its past and its present How hard can it be to arrest a man recognised wherever he goes, in a country roughly the size of Scotland? Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian Prime Minister, has asked the international community to believe that if the man in question does not want to be found, the answer is, effectively, “impossible”. This answer is not acceptable. It is entirely appropriate that Belgrade’s failure to surrender Ratko Mladic to the UN war crimes tribunal as promised led yesterday to the suspension of talks with the EU on possible Serbian membership. Mr Kostunica...

Top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic has been located in Serbia and his arrest and extradition to the UN war crimes tribunal is imminent, a prominent Belgrade newspaper reported today. The independent Danas said the current location of the war-time Bosnian Serb army commander was provided to the Serbian government by chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte during her June 2 visit to Belgrade. The report could not be independently verified, and a government source refused to comment. Mladic and another top suspect, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, have been on the run since 1995 when they were...