Belgrade admits army hid war crimes fugitive Mladic

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serb officers helped top war crimes
fugitive Ratko Mladic hide on army premises until mid-2002 then
let him get away, the Serbia-Montenegro Defense Council said on
Wednesday.

It said a group of former Bosnian Serb army and former
Yugoslav Army officers then took over the task of hiding
Mladic, who is wanted on two counts of genocide in the 1992-95
Bosnia war by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The
Hague.

The Military Intelligence Agency (VBA) was now
investigating to find out who was involved and if any officers
were still in touch with the former Bosnian Serb Army
commander, accused of orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre of 8,000 Muslims, Europe’s worst atrocity since World
War Two.

Belgrade is anxious to demonstrate to the United Nations,
the European Union and the major powers that it is now
conducting a proper manhunt for Mladic, a step the West says it
has failed to take so far.

Capturing Mladic or persuading him to surrender is key to
the country’s hopes of joining the EU and NATO eventually and
attracting greater foreign investment.

The statement said a military intelligence report covering
the period from 1997 until the present “has determined beyond
doubt that Ratko Mladic left the military compounds he had
occasionally used for hiding until his retirement on June 1,
2002.”

That was when Yugoslavia passed a law on cooperation with
the Hague tribunal.

The official Tanjug news agency quoted the Council as
saying a group of Bosnian Serb Army and Yugoslav Army veterans
then took over hiding Mladic.

Investigators were ordered to find out who hid him on army
premises and who arranged his getaway after the extradition to
The Hague of nationalist strongman Slobodan Milosevic made it
no longer safe for him to rely on army protection.

Milosevic was ousted in 2000 by pro-Western reformers but
extreme nationalists remained a force to be reckoned with. They
assassinated reformist prime minister Zoran Djindjic in the
spring of 2003.

Hague chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said this week the
EU and the NATO powers should now lean heavily on Belgrade to
force it to arrest Mladic and hand him over. She says Mladic is
in Serbia, but Belgrade says there is no evidence that is the
case.