Ratko Mladic, the former Yugoslavia's most wanted war crimes fugitive, hid at properties owned by the military and in Belgrade apartments between 2002 and 2005, a Serbian minister told a German magazine. “Between June 1 2002 and the end of 2005 he sought refuge in three properties owned by the military and in several Belgrade apartments,” said Rasim Ljajic, the Serbian minister in charge of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). “Unfortunately we only discovered this afterwards,” Ljajic told German magazine Spiegel in an interview published this week. He said that “many people” were aware that Mladic was being hidden by the military, but they kept quiet either because of threats or because they were opposed to him being handed over the ICTY. “On the other hand Mladic's stay in Belgrade was only known to a few people,” the magazine quoted him as saying in comments published in German. Mladic, indicted by the ICTY for genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities including the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, has been on the run for more than a decade. The 66-year-old former Bosnian Serb military commander is the most wanted war crimes fugitive after the arrest in Belgrade last month of Radovan Karadzic, his wartime political leader. Meanwhile, Serbian authorities say they have found a bag that could belong to war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic. The government team that arrested Karadzic last month says the bag contains a laptop computer, 55 disks, newspaper clips and two books. A statement issued on Tuesday also says that DNA and other analyses are under way to confirm that the bag was Karadzic's. It says that the bag was found around 1300GMT on Monday, in a Belgrade suburb. Karadzic's lawyer has accused Serbian authorities of reporting a false arrest date and confiscating Karadzic's laptop. He says Karadzic stored material for his defense on the computer disks. Karadzic faces a trial for genocide at a U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
