by Srdja Trifkovic
The circumstances surrounding arrest of the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, General Ratko Mladić, seem puzzling. On May 26 he was captured in the house of a close relative with the same surname in a village north of Belgrade. Prima facie this means either that Mladić was entirely left to his own devices and had to seek shelter with people certain to be under police surveillance, or else that the Serbian authorities had been conniving in his hiding. The former is unlikely in view of the effectiveness of Mladić’s concealment after he finally went underground in 2002. The latter is even less likely in view of President Boris Tadić’s constant desire to please his mentors in Brussels and Washington and get Serbia a step closer to the ever-elusive EU membership.
According to our reliable sources in Belgrade, Mladić would not have been discovered had he not decided to give himself up in return for a substantial financial reward for his family. He is a very sick man and unlikely to live much longer. In addition to a chronic kidney ailment and high blood pressure, he has suffered several minor strokes over the past decade. Two years ago he was treated—under an assumed name—for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at a clinic in Belgrade. Aware that his wife Bosiljka and son Darko had been living in penury since the authorities stopped paying his pension in 2005, Mladić decided to offer the government a deal. The final settlement is well below the $10m previously offered for Mladić’s capture, but sufficient to enable his wife and son to live in comfort for many years to come. Article here
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