Eurasia Press & News
Soldiers of the EU’s peacekeeping mission, EUFOR, supported by NATO and local police, began to search a house of a close associate of the war-time Bosnian Serb commander and war-crimes suspect, Ratko Mladic, for material that would help reveal his whereabouts.
Around 4:00 am on Thursday, some 60 EUFOR soldiers started searching the house of Dusko Todic in the northwestern town of Banja Luka, in the Serb-dominated Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska, EUFOR spokesman Lieutenant Commander Pat O’Callaghan told Balkan Insight.
“Dusko Todic was a military associate of Ratko Mladic,” he said.
The raid was launched after a specific request made by the International War Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, ICTY. The ICTY, EUFOR and NATO have been regularly searching for Mladic, the only high-level Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect who still remains in hiding a full 13 years after the war. According to different local and international officials, Mladic has been spending most of his time in Serbia lately.
According to local media, Todic was a former counter-intelligence officer in the Republika Srpska Army, and is believed to be a close Mladic’s associate.
“The search is still ongoing,” O’Callaghan said and stressed that throughout this process, Todic’s family was “very cooperative, very supportive.”
So far, EUFOR has confiscated some personal computers, CDs and written documents, he added.
