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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS