Mladic's son refuses to negotiate surrender of fugitive father
The son of General Ratko Mladic – the Bosnian Serb wartime commander sought by the UN war crimes tribunal – said he would refuse to negotiate his father’s surrender with Serbian authorities, according to a Belgrade newspaper today.
Darko Mladic told Blic that, earlier this week, police searched the Mladic family home in Belgrade, and authorities interrogated his relatives in an effort to locate the fugitive, indicted for genocide for the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica – Europe’s worst carnage since the Second World War.
“I will not negotiate about my father’s surrender,” Darko Mladic was quoted as saying. “Also, I have no intention of saying when and where I last saw him.”
European Union officials have extended a deadline for Serbia to deliver Mladic to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, by the end of April or face a suspension of negotiations on building closer ties with the bloc.
Serbian President Boris Tadic said authorities in Belgrade were determined to do everything in their power to arrest Mladic by the end of the month.
“I hope that our government is going to do everything in the next few weeks,” Tadic said in Vienna, after meeting with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
Plassnik said the two had discussed the EU’s expectation that Serbia cooperate fully with the UN tribunal.
Asked whether he had information on Mladic’s whereabouts, Tadic said “I am not a policeman. I am not in charge for that.”
He noted, however, that Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica had promised that Mladic would be delivered to the UN court by the new deadline.
Mladic is believed to be hiding in Serbia under the protection of army hardliners.
His son described Wednesday’s police search as a “culmination of pressures” on the family, after authorities in December stopped paying Mladic’s pension from the Yugoslav army, according to Blic.
Later, police searched the Belgrade apartments of four relatives, including two of Darko Mladic’s maternal uncles, seizing some documents and a phone notebook. The four relatives were then taken for questioning by the security service, he reportedly said.
“My uncles told me they were asked about my father,” Mladic’s son was quoted as saying.
“But all their pressures, whatever they choose to do, it will not succeed,” Darko Mladic said, adding the police were “not brutal” and did not “even mention” his father during the search.
Police also searched a part of Darko Mladic’s home from which he runs a computer company, and went through business documents, including tax and fiscal reports.
Police refused to comment on interrogations of Mladic’s relatives.
Tax authorities said, however, that their search of Darko Mladic’s company was unrelated to the search for the fugitive commander. They said in a statement that Darko Mladic was suspected of failing to report “all business transactions in 2006,” and may have “illegally presented profits as loans to unemployed persons.”
