BELGRADE, Serbia — The old man, hobbled by pain, couldn’t coax himself to sleep. He got out of bed just before dawn, pulled on a blue baseball cap and headed for a walk in the garden. Maybe some fresh air would clear his head.
At the same time, four jeeps carrying about 20 masked men in black fatigues rolled into the remote northern Serbian village of Lazarevo, hoping to surprise a quarry that had eluded them for 16 years. They pulled up to four houses simultaneously — all owned by relatives of one of the world’s most-wanted men.
Four of the men jumped over a fence and burst into one of the houses as the frail man moved toward the door. They grabbed him and pushed him roughly to the floor.
“Identify yourself!” one said.
The old man managed a whisper: “I’m Ratko Mladic.”
An excruciating manhunt had ended quietly as the sun rose over the Serbian fields.
The account, provided to The Associated Press by three Serbian police officials on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, was the most detailed to date of the operation that captured the man charged with orchestrating atrocities in the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, including Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.
Mladic, the officials said, moved to the largely Bosnian Serb village of Lazarevo about two years ago, figuring he would be safe with his relatives. Earlier in his life as a fugitive he was brazen enough to be seen at fancy restaurants and drinking clubs in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, but here he lived a low-key lifestyle.
Age and declining health helped make him inconspicuous. The slow, unsteady 69-year-old who appeared in court Friday bore little resemblance to the robust, uniformed figure strutting in front of the cameras during the Bosnian War.
The team of police had no specific intelligence that Mladic was inside a relative’s yellow brick house.
Commanded army
Ratko Mladic was top commander of the Bosnian Serb army during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, which left more than 100,000 people dead and drove another 1.8 million from their homes.
He is charged with international war crimes and had evaded capture since 1995.
