Ratko Mladic to face tribunal on genocide charges (Reuters)

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic will face trial on genocide charges in the Hague following his arrest in Serbia after 15 years on the run, with European officials expecting his extradition within 10 days.

The arrest on Thursday of Mladic, the last of the three men blamed for instigating the ethnic cleansing during the 1992-5 Bosnian war, was expected to clear the way for the former pariah state of Serbia to join the European Union.

"On behalf of the Republic of Serbia I can announce the arrest of Ratko Mladic. The extradition process is under way," Serbian President Boris Tadic told reporters in Belgrade.

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, was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said.

"Mladic was handcuffed and whisked away," said the official, who added that he had been cooperative. The once burly and widely feared general was not disguised but had false identity papers and looked haggard and much older, he said.

"Hardly anyone could recognize him."

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she expected Mladic to be extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague within nine or 10 days.

Tadic confirmed Mladic, 69, had been detained in Serbia, which had long said it could not find a man who is still seen as a hero by many Serbs and whose Bosnian Serb Army was armed and funded by the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial for war crimes.

"This removes a heavy burden from Serbia and closes a page of our unfortunate history," Tadic said.

The arrest may have come too late to place the general jointly on trial alongside his former political leader Radovan Karadzic, the Yugoslavia tribunal's prosecution office said.

Mladic was indicted in 1995 together with Karadzic, who was arrested in July 2008 and went on trial in October 2009, and prosecutors initially wanted to try both men together, but separated the case shortly before Karadzic's trial started.

Frederick Swinnen, special adviser to chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz, said it was too early to say for certain whether the Mladic and Karadzic cases would be rejoined, but added that doing so would also delay the trial of Karadzic.

Peter Robinson, one of Karadzic's legal advisers, said that Karadzic regretted the arrest of Mladic.

"Dr. Karadzic is sorry for General Mladic's loss of freedom. He looks forward to working with him to bring out the truth about what happened in Bosnia," Robinson told Reuters by email.

ARRESTED NEAR BELGRADE

Mladic was arrested in the village of Lazarevo, near the northeastern town of Zrenjanin around 100 km (60 miles) from the capital Belgrade in the early hours, the police official said.

Bosnian Muslim survivors said the news was bittersweet.

"This represents a small bit of justice for my heart, my soul and my pain," said Sabaheta Fejzic, 55, who lost her only son, her husband and many other male relatives in the massacre.

Many nationalists in Serbia, which was under international sanctions over the war in Bosnia and then bombed by NATO to stop atrocities in Kosovo in 1999, idolise Mladic and one representative made clear their fury with the government.

"This shameful arrest of a Serb general is a blow to our national interests and the state," Boris Aleksic, a spokesman for the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party said. "This is a regime of liars -- dirty, corrupt and treacherous."

Several dozen nationalists and soccer hooligans rallied in downtown Belgrade to protest the arrest, clashing briefly with police who dispersed them from the main square, a Reuters reporter said.

Dozens of people were arrested and injured in 2008 throughout Serbia in riots following the arrest of Karadzic.

Tadic said he would not allow a repeat of such violence.

"This country will remain stable," he said. "Whoever tries to destabilize it will be prosecuted and punished."

Washington and other capitals hailed the arrest.

"The European prospects of Serbia are now brighter than ever," said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

"Serbia is a country that has suffered a lot but the fact it has delivered presumed war criminals is very good news. It's one more step toward Serbia's integration one day into the European Union," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at a Group of Eight summit in France.

Although his arrest removed a diplomatic thorn from Belgrade's side, the revelation that Mladic was in Serbia, as many suspected, raises questions as to how he eluded justice for so long.

(Additional reporting by Adam Tanner in Rabat, Aaron Gray-Block in Amsterdam and David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo and Catherine Bremer in Deauville; Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Lawyer: Genocide suspect Ratko Mladic 'a ruin of a man'

Belgrade, Serbia (CNN) -- After more than 15 years in hiding, onetime Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic was in a Belgrade jail Thursday night to face charges that he presided over Europe's worst massacre since World War II.

Mladic was the highest-ranking fugitive to remain at large after the conflicts that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. His arrest followed a three-year investigation, President Boris Tadic announced in a dramatic news conference Thursday morning.

Tadic told CNN's "Connect the World" that he expected Mladic to be transferred to the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia "within seven days." He said Serbian authorities are still investigating who aided Mladic during his decade and a half on the run, but he called allegations that the country's military sheltered him "rubbish."

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"At the end of the day, he was protected by a very small group of people from his family," Tadic said. He acknowledged that Mladic may have been aided by military officers early on, "but at the end of that process, I don't believe that," Tadic said.

Mladic's lawyer, Milos Saljic, said Mladic's hearing was halted and rescheduled for Friday when he could not address the judge "because of his physical and psychological condition." Saljic called the ex-general "a ruin of a man" who has suffered two heart attacks and three strokes since 1996.

"He is no longer the monumental personality he used to be," Saljic said. He said doctors would evaluate whether Mladic is fit to return to court on Friday.

Hundreds of riot police patrolled central Belgrade as the 69-year-old Mladic made his initial appearance on war crimes charges in a special Belgrade court. One squad chased away a crowd of 100 to 200 people, including one man who waved a Serbian flag, but they were far outnumbered by other people eating dinner or otherwise enjoying a warm spring night.

The former Yugoslav army officer was the commanding general of Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has charged him with leading a genocidal campaign against Bosnia's Muslim and Croat populations, including "direct involvement" in the 1995 killings of nearly 8,000 men and boys in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica -- the worst European massacre since the Holocaust.

However, Mladic remains a hero to some Serbs, and small outbursts of anger were seend in Belgrade late Thursday. A passenger in a speeding car hurled a full beer can at a Serbian television truck, while another driver shouted, "I like Ratko Mladic" and an obscenity as he passed the courthouse.

After midnight, three men stood beneath the building, clapping and chanting Mladic's name.

"That man fought for us, for my father and mother," 28-year-old Goran Stijela told CNN. One of his companions, Midorag Rodjenkov, called Mladic "a martyr for Christ."

Mladic was transferred from Lazarevo, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Belgrade, earlier Thursday. In a statement issued after the arrest, the tribunal said it looked forward to his "expeditious transfer" to its custody in The Hague, Netherlands, for trial.

Once there, he will be allowed to enter a plea to the charges against him, which include genocide, crimes against humanity and violating the laws of war, the court said.

"The arrest of Mladic is a milestone in the Tribunal's history and brings the institution closer to the successful completion of its mandate," the tribunal said. The sole remaining fugitive from the court is former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, "and the Tribunal hopes he will be arrested in the very near future."

Mladic is accused of leading a campaign of "ethnic cleansing," widespread killing, forcible deportations, torture, forced labor and physical, psychological and sexual violence during the Bosnian war.

The international police agency Interpol praised the arrest as "a triumph for international justice." Interpol officials had met with Tadic in January to discuss closer cooperation in the hunt for war crimes suspects, the organization's secretary-general, Ronald Noble, said in a statement on Mladic's capture.

"After today's arrest, no one should doubt Serbia's commitment to the rule of law and justice," Noble said.

Tadic said the arrest will help the process of reconciliation throughout the Balkans and should pave the way for Serbia's entry into the European Union. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton hailed the arrest as a victory for "the rule of law in Serbia" and praised Tadic and his government for "this courageous action."

Mladic had been on the run since the Bosnian war ended in 1995. The Croatian newspaper Jutarnji List was the first to report his arrest, saying police were doing DNA tests on a suspect to determine whether he was the notorious former commander.

Mladic was the last fugitive from a triumvirate of Serbian leaders accused of genocide against Muslims and Croats as the three populations fought a brutal war over Yugoslav territory.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was toppled in 2000 and sent to face charges in The Hague, but he died in 2006 while the trial was still going on. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested in July 2008 and is now on trial in The Hague.

Karadzic was removed from power under the Dayton Peace accords that ended the Bosnian war. He went into hiding, grew a full white beard and long hair, and was working in an alternative medicine clinic in Belgrade -- right under the noses of authorities -- when he was captured.

Karadzic has insisted on defending himself at The Hague. Prosecutors accuse him of deliberately obstructing the trial with delaying tactics, and judges have threatened to impose a defense lawyer on him if he does not cooperate.

The Bosnian war was the longest of the conflicts spawned by the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Backed by the Milosevic government, Bosnian Serb forces seized control of more than half the country and launched a campaign against the Muslim and Croat populations.

The United Nations declared Srebrenica to be a safe haven, and tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims flooded in, expecting protection. But a small contingent of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers, lightly armed and aware that no reinforcements were coming, stood aside and allowed Mladic's troops to overrun Srebrenica, leading to the slaughter.

NATO intervened in the conflict, bombing Bosnian Serb military positions. The United States brought the leaders of the warring factions to an agreement in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, bringing the violence to an end.

CNN's Ivan Watson, Richard Allen Greene, Joe Sterling, Moni Basu and Lateef Mungin contributed to this report.

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Ratko Mladic arrest boosts Serbia's EU bid (The Christian Science Monitor)

Graz, Austria – Serbian security services today arrested fugitive Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who had spent 15 years on the run from genocide charges, so removing Serbia's biggest obstacle to European Union entry.

Mr. Mladic is accused of presiding over the massacre of 7,800 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995. He also faces blame for a three-and-a-half year siege of Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in which as many as 10,000 people were killed or went missing. He was the most prominent Bosnian war crimes suspect at large since the arrest of Radovan Karadzic in 2008.

"This removes a heavy burden from Serbia and closes a page of our unfortunate history," said Serbian President Boris Tadic in a press conference called to confirm the arrest.

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Mladic's extradition to The Hague to face the war crimes charges is under way.

Today's arrest is a boost to Serbia's hopes of gaining EU candidate status in the fall. The European Commission is waiting for cast-iron confirmation of the arrested man's identity before making a statement, but said it had "all reason to believe" the man is indeed Mladic.

The security services are reported to be conducting DNA tests to confirm the arrested man is Mladic, a process that is expected to take three days.

Mladic was sent into retirement in October 1996 with sightings of him becoming less frequent, before becoming a full-time fugitive in recent years. The Serbian authorities have long said they could not find him, a contention many in the international community doubted.

Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb President during the Sarajevo siege, is currently in The Hague after being captured in Belgrade living under false papers in July 2008.

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