Serb police step up bid to catch Mladic

Published on Sunday 11 January 2009 21:22

POLICE put up "wanted" posters across Serbia yesterday offering a 1 million (£880,000) reward for the capture of the wartime Bosnian Serb army commander, Ratko Mladic.

Posters carrying photographs of Mladic, the former general charged with genocide, and another war crimes fugitive Goran Hadzic, were distributed to all police stations in Serbia.

The posters offer 1 million for information leading to Mladic's arrest, while the bounty for Hadzic, the former leader of Croatian Serb rebels, is 250,000.

The posters list a free telephone number for information. The US also has offered $5 million for Mladic's arrest.

Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of the hunt for Serb war crimes fugitives, said the identities of those who help in the capture of either of the two will be kept secret.

Mladic is charged with genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. He is accused of orchestrating the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica – the worst carnage in Europe since the Second World War – and the armed siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during the 1992-95 war.

Hadzic is charged by the tribunal with 14 counts of war crime offences allegedly committed during Croatia's war for independence in the 1990s.