SERBIA: Trial continues in Belgrade for 11 people accused of helping war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic

The trial of 11 people indicted by a Serbian court for helping top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic evade arrest continued in Belgrade on Monday (December 25), under pressure from the European Union for results on the hunt for the fugitive. The eleven suspects are accused of helping the former Bosnian Serb general hide in various rented flats in Serbia's capital Belgrade from mid-2002 to January this year. One suspect has admitted he sheltered the fugitive in 2002, but the other 10 deny ever hiding him. Mladic's arrest or surrender is key to Serbia's progress towards European Union membership. Association talks were suspended in May as punishment for Belgrade's failure to bring him to justice. Brussels has said the negotiations will restart immediately once Mladic is delivered to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague. "We consider this to be a political trial," said Dragan Palibrk. "The state of Serbia has to prove to the West that it is doing something to deliver Mladic to the Hague, and the way they have found is to prosecute the little people." The suspects, among them three women, were arrested early this year in a swoop around Belgrade. The indictment against them says they mostly hid the fugitive in modest flats in the New Belgrade area of the capital, a maze-like 1960s dormitory suburb of concrete high rises. Mladic and his wartime political boss, Radovan Karadzic, who is also at large, are wanted for genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys and for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo. Hague chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte accuses hardliners in the Serb and Bosnian Serb military and police of helping them evade justice.

ITN Source | December 25, 2006

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