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| Europe |
| Mladic sheltered by Serbian military, says minister |
| 2008-08-13 |
| Ratko Mladic, the former Yugoslavia's most wanted war crimes fugitive, sheltered between 2002-05 at properties owned by the Serbian military and in Belgrade apartments, a Serbian minister told a German magazine. "Between June 1, 2002 and the end of 2005 he sought refuge in three properties owned by the military and in several Belgrade apartments," said Rasim Ljajic, Serbia's minister in charge of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He told German weekly Spiegel that "many people" were aware that the former Bosnian Serb military commander was being hidden by the military, but they kept quiet either because of threats or because they were opposed to him being handed over the ICTY. "Unfortunately we only discovered this afterwards," Ljajic told Spiegel in an interview published this week. "On the other hand Mladic's stay in Belgrade was only known to a few people," the magazine quoted him as saying in comments published in German. Mladic, indicted by the ICTY for genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities including the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, has been on the run for more than a decade. The 66-year-old is the most wanted war crimes fugitive after the arrest in Belgrade last month of Radovan Karadzic, his wartime political leader. |
| Posted by:Fred |