Serb police have detained a former army colonel suspected of helping top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic.
Stanko Ristic and his son Predrag appeared before a municipal court in Belgrade yesterday on "suspicion of helping a perpetrator after the act," defence lawyer Milomir Salic said.
Mr Salic gave no details because he said the case was labelled secret. However, the arrest raises speculation that genocide suspect Mladic will soon face justice.
"The arrest fully tightened the noose around Mladic," the daily newspaper Blicquoted what it called a reliable source as saying. "His arrest might also be expected soon."
It was latest speculative media report on Belgrade's efforts to deliver Mladic to the UN war crimes court in The Hague by the end of April and so avert a suspension of talks on closer ties with the European Union.
Ristic was questioned earlier this year in connection with a case against two other people believed to be part of a network enabling Mladic to stay at large more than a decade after being indicted at the end of the war in Bosnia in 1995.
Mladic is indicted for genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo which killed more than 10,000 civilians.
His arrest and handover to the UN court is a key condition for Serbia's bid to join the European mainstream after the 1990s Balkan conflicts that tore socialist Yugoslavia apart.