Bosnian Serb General Radko Mladic Was Captured in Serbia

General Radko Mladic

Serbian authorities announced the capture of Radko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general who is suspected of having overseen the massacre in Srebrenica in 1995, when 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were killed.

Mladic is to be brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands, where he will be charged with genocide.

The capture was announced by Serbian President Boris Tadic, who appeared on television and announced that the Serbian authorities are ready to extradite Mladic.

Boris Tadic

The news comes against the background of Serbia’s eagerness to join the European Union and of ICTY’s report according to which the Serbian authorities were derelict of their duty to find Mladic.

Full cooperation in capturing those who were accused of crimes against humanity during the war in the Balkans is a prerequisite of Serbia’s admission to EU.

Tadic said that by the capture of Mladic a page in the history of the country was turned and that the doors of the EU would thus open for his country.

He added that Radko Mladic was arrested on Serbian territory, but did not specify where exactly.

Radko Mladic is consider by many Serbian nationalists a hero, wherefore protests in the streets of Serbia may be staged.

It is rather difficult for the Serbian authorities to explain how was it possible for the fugitive general to live in Serbia for so many years without any action taken by the Serbian security forces to apprehend him and send him to The Hague.

Three years ago, Serbia delivered Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Bosnian Serb Republic. His process is underway, being delayed by technicalities and by the huge amount of evidence against him.

Serbia refused to participate these days in Warsaw at a summit of the central European nations because the Polish authorities invited the leaders of the breakaway province Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia in 2008.