Serb police have detained a former naval officer suspected of helping top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic stay at large, Belgrade media said today.
The reported detention of Mr Vucetic, a war invalid who lost a foot during Bosnia's 1992-95 conflict, is likely to add to speculation that the net is tightening around one of the world's most wanted men.
Belgrade has said it is doing all it can to meet Western demands and deliver Mladic to the United Nations war crimes court in The Hague, to avoid a suspension of talks on closer ties with the European Union.
Earlier in April, UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said Serbia promised her the wartime chief of the Bosnian Serb military would be in the Hague before the end of the month.
Mr Vucetic, whose weekend arrest in a Belgrade suburb was reported by two daily newspapers, was described as a retired navy captain and an old school friend of the genocide suspect.
He is due to appear before a court in the Serbian capital this week, daily Kurir quoted his lawyer Branko Butolan as saying. Court officials were not immediately available for comment on the report.
It came less than a week after Serbian media reported the arrests of retired army colonel Stanko Ristic and his son Predrag on suspicion they were also helping Mladic, who is still a hero for many Serb nationalists.
Mr 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 evade justice more than a decade after the Bosnian conflict.
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.
Del Ponte says he is in Serbia, protected by hardliners. Belgrade denies knowing Mladic's whereabouts, but says it will soon meet Western demands for his handover.