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Why is Ratko Mladic so hard to find?
The Serb Army still holds the key to the mystery of Mladic’s whereabouts, says Robert Fox
As lawyers for Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, delay the inevitable by appealing against extradition to The Hague, the question remains – why has his partner in pillage, General Ratko Mladic, not been found too?
Mladic is the big fish. There can clearly be no closure and no serious concession to Serbia on EU and Nato membership until he and Goran Hadzic, his colleague in the murderous Krajian campaigns of 1991 and 1995, are caught. As for the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 unarmed Muslim males in July 1995, there are enough first-hand intercepts of his communications to charge him as the main culprit, according to the UN.
Karadzic sought the protection of anonymity by becoming an alternative medicine guru in New Belgrade. Mladic has the protection of the army he served, and parts of which serve him by all accounts.
He was recruited and trained in the Yugoslav Federal Army, the JNA. On the break-up of old Yugoslavia it became Vojska Jugoslava, the VJ, which had the army of the Bosnian Serbs under direct control. So direct was the control that the salaries of the senior Bosnian Serb officers were paid by the VJ paymasters in Belgrade. Ratko Mladic is reported to be still drawing his military pension - a suggestion the Serb authorities have not sought to deny.
This gives the strongest clue as to what is going on. When Mladic surfaced briefly in 2002 it was in a heavily guarded compound for senior retired diplomats and officers on the edge of Belgrade. Today he is reported to be protected with a heavily armed detail of bodyguards.
It must be asked why the Nato powers, Britain included, are cosying up to the present Serb Army command, offering them training and access to British courses, when there is little doubt that these men know where Mladic is and who among the military brotherhood is protecting him.
Ratko Mladic is reported to be drawing a military pension – a suggestion Serb authorities haven’t denied