SERBIA HAS reacted angrily to home video footage showing Ratko Mladic enjoying public dinners and parties and relaxing in his Belgrade home and at a military barracks, at a time when officials claimed to have no idea where the war crimes fugitive was hiding.
The former general accused of orchestrating the genocidal massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 is shown eating, drinking and dancing with relatives and friends, playing table tennis, and walking with his wife at what is apparently an army base.
He visits busy cafes and restaurants and celebrates his son’s wedding and the birth of a grandchild. He also attends the funeral of his daughter, an event that Serb intelligence services said he missed.
Bosnian television, which broadcast the footage, claims one clip may have been filmed as recently as last winter, and shows Mladic walking slowly with the aid of a stick in a snowy forest, fuelling rumours that he may have suffered a slight stroke.
After denying for years that Mladic was being shielded by allies in politics and the security services, Serb officials eventually admitted he had received support and spent time in military facilities until mid-2002, when they say that such help stopped completely.
Belgrade claims to have lost track of Mladic in 2005, and the broadly pro-western government insists it is doing everything possible to catch him. Serbia’s long-term bid to join the EU is dependent on its complete co-operation in the hunt for Mladic.
“The material that was shown last night was seized in Mladic’s house in December 2008 and handed to the Hague Tribunal in March this year,” said Rasim Ljajic, Serbia’s minister in charge of co-operation with the UN war crimes court in the Netherlands. “The last known footage was taken eight years ago. The last time Mladic was in military premises was at the Krcmari army barracks near Valjevo on June 1st, 2002.”
Mr Ljajic said the broadcast was intended to negatively influence a forthcoming EU assessment of Serbia’s search for Mladic. Critics of Serbia’s efforts say it does not have the political will to catch Mladic, whose wartime ally, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, was found last year. He had grown his hair and a beard and was practising alternative medicine in Belgrade.
