Mladic arrest: ‘beginning of the end’ of Bosnia’s tragedy, say EU officials

EU leaders hastened to welcome the arrest of war criminal Ratko Mladić by Serbian authorities today (26 May). Surrendering Mladić, known as ‘the butcher of Srebrenica’, to the International Crime Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia was a major precondition of granting Serbia candidate EU member status. Mladić’s arrest was announced by Serbian President Boris Tadić at a hastily convened press event, just as High Representative Catherine Ashton was en route to Belgrade for a visit during which she had been expected to warn Serbia that the arrests of war criminals Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić were a sine qua non precondition of the country’s accession to the EU. “On behalf of the Republic of Serbia I can announce the arrest of Ratko Mladić. The extradition process is under way,” Tadić announced, adding: “This removes a heavy burden from Serbia and closes a page of our unfortunate history.” Mladić was arrested in the village of Lazarevo, near the northeastern town of Zrenjanin, around 100 km (60 miles) from the capital Belgrade and close to the Romanian border, a police official said. Reportedly, the house in which he was hiding was owned by a relative of Mladić and had been under surveillance for the last two weeks. As commander of the Bosnian Serb forces in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, Mladić was indicted by an international war crime court in 1995 for the massacre of 8000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a brutal 43-month siege of Sarajevo (see ‘Background’). “This …