Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro – Gen. Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb commander accused of orchestrating Europe’s worst massacre of civilians since World War II, has been located in Serbia and authorities are negotiating his surrender, security officials said Tuesday.
Serbia is under intense pressure from the European Union and the U.S. to capture Mladic, charged by the war-crimes tribunal with genocide for allegedly ordering the massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica and for the 1992-95 siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
Mladic, considered the most ruthless commander of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, “has not yet been arrested,” one official who is close to the operation to find Mladic told The Associated Press.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not entitled to speak to the media.
Another security official, also demanding anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information and fears of jeopardizing negotiations, confirmed that Mladic’s “hiding place has been discovered in recent days.”
Both officials refused to specify the exact whereabouts of Mladic’s hideout, but the private Beta news agency said the former commander was found on Cer Mountain, about 60 miles west of Belgrade on the border with Bosnia. Beta did not cite its source.
Earlier, the Belgrade-based agency reported that “an operation was in progress to locate” Mladic.
It also did not name the source of that information.
Chief U.N. war-crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte repeatedly has said Mladic is in Serbia and “in the immediate reach of the authorities.”
