Security forces searched on Monday for war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic at a factory in Serbia, whose new government must capture the former Bosnian Serb general in order to speed up its EU accession.
Armed with automatic firearms and dressed in all-black masks and outfits, police surrounded the factory in the southwestern town of Valjevo in the middle of the morning, officials said.
“Under the orders of the war crimes prosecution, the interior ministry conducted a search of the Vujic Valjevo factory,” an interior ministry source said.
“We were verifying information according to which Mladic could be there, but according to the first information, nobody was found,” the source said.
Vujic Valjevo is run by a large Serbian company that manufactures windows and bottled water. Sources said police also searched houses occupied by its management in a bid to find some evidence of financial aid for Mladic while in hiding.
Mladic, 66, is wanted by a UN tribunal for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during his time as commander of the Bosnian Serb military forces during the 1992 to 1995 war in Bosnia.
He faces charges relating to the siege of Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 were killed and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys — Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II.
The wartime Bosnian Serb general has used the Valjevo region as a hideout in the past, a former Serbian police chief said.
He was located there in 2001 after security services intercepted a telephone call, said Goran Petrovic, who used to head Serbia’s secret police, in a report in 2006.
Citing unnamed high-ranking officials from the interior ministry, B92 said the security services were also hunting for people thought to have helped Mladic avoid justice.
Speaking to the media later, the factory’s owners, Vladislav and Vidoje Vujic, whose houses were searched and had some photographs confiscated, denied they had any links with Mladic.
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