Mladic home movies

Bosnian TV has shown several video clips of war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic apparently living freely in Serbia. The former Bosnian Serb army commander if facing genocide charges, which were filed against him by a UN tribunal in 1995. Some of the footage shows Mladic singing popular Serbian folk songs and dancing at weddings and private parties. Another amateur video, apparently taken by someone from his family, shows him sitting in peaceful wooded surroundings of what the television channel said were Serbian army military barracks. The Sarajevo-based TV Federacije, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, did not say where it got the video footage, but it said the home videos were taken over a period of years, one as recently as 2008. But Belgrade officials claim that the most recent footage was filmed in 2001, when Mladic was last seen in public before disappearing. Previously to that he flouted a UN indictment, openly living in Belgrade where he was reportedly often seen in cafes and at football matches. Mladic has been on the run since 1995 when the UN war crimes court in The Hague indicted him on genocide charges. It is alleged that he orchestrated the massacre of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica during the Bosnia's 1992-95 war - the worst carnage in Europe since World War II. Pro-Western leaders in Belgrade have insisted they do not know where Mladic is, although their recent investigation revealed that he had been hiding in different apartments in a new part of Belgrade as recently as 2006. His capture is a condition for Serbian progress toward membership in the European Union. In Sarajevo, some of the survivors of the Srebrenica massacre said the videos came as no complete surprise. "All Serbia is behind him. Every criminal found refuge in Serbia and Serbia does not show any will to apprehend these war criminals," one woman said.

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ITN | June 12, 2009

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