Eurasia Press & News
Serbia’s secret services are discovering more details about top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic every day, with the latest information suggesting he spent a two-week holiday on the Montenegrin coast in 1997 but was stingy and ungracious with his guards and staff.
With Mladic’s arrest a condition for Serbia’s European Union progress, Belgrade says it is doing its best to find the fomer Bosnian Serb general: it has set up hotlines, put out reward posters and is painstakingly collecting details on his movements and mindset from former associates.
The latest titbit of information has Mladic spending two weeks in luxury on the Montenegrin coast in 1997, but being very tight-fisted with the people guarding him, Vecernje Novosti daily reported on Wednesday.
“Mladic rented a big two-storey house where he was accommodated, and ordered his security guards to sleep in a tent next to the villa,” a source told the paper. The more than ten people who guarded Mladic complained about the heat and uncomfortable accommodation, but to no avail. They were also angry about their modest salaries – they got 100 German marks for 15 days of work.
Mladic had planned to stay in the village of Rezevici much longer, but shortened his stay to just 15 days.
“Montenegrin authorities were agitated when they found out that Mladic was on their territory,” the source said. “The general sensed the danger to his security and fearing an eventual arrest suddenly he interrupted his holidays and returned to Belgrade.
Mladic is indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, on two counts of genocide for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of some 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys during the fall of the eastern Bosniak enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. He is also charged with a dozen counts of other crimes against humanity for his actions through the war.
