SERBIA: Serbian officials said yesterday that the broadcast of a shocking 1995 video showing the murder of Bosnian Muslims by Serb paramilitaries had led to the arrest of most of the killers and could prompt the long-awaited capture of General Ratko Mladic.
Serbian television showed the amateur footage this week, and much of the nation was appalled at the sight of soldiers in red berets and fatigues manhandling six terrified men and boys from Srebrenica along a leafy mountain road, before shooting them dead.
Film showing some of the victims also being tortured by their captors was considered too shocking for public broadcast, although Carla del Ponte, the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor, showed it earlier this week during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague.
Serbia said 10 of the paramilitaries had already been arrested, news that Ms del Ponte said offered hope that the government had shed its ambivalent attitude towards arresting suspected war criminals who are widely regarded as heroes in their homeland. The most wanted are Gen Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb army during the 1992-5 war, who is thought to be in hiding in Serbia-Montenegro; and his chief political ally, Radovan Karadzic, who is believed to divide his time between Serbia-Montenegro and the Serb-run region of Bosnia.
Rasim Ljajic, Serbia-Montenegro's minister for human rights, agreed with Ms del Ponte that the broadcast of the footage, the resultant public outrage and subsequent arrests of the killers, suggested that Belgrade may finally be ready to arrest the fugitives and send them to The Hague.
"This video will mark a turning point in the minds of our public and make it easier for the government to fulfil its commitments towards the tribunal," Mr Ljajic said.In the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, Ms del Ponte insisted yesterday that Belgrade and the Bosnian Serb authorities do their utmost over the next month to catch the accused ahead of the 10th anniversary of the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.
"The horrendous picturesremind us all that we cannot wait any longer," she said. "I need Karadzic and Mladic in The Hague before 11th July to be able to participate in the commemoration of Srebrenica." Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who long baulked at arresting war crimes suspects and claimed their capture could destabilise the country, has sent a dozen suspects to The Hague this year.
Washington and Brussels have cranked up the pressure on Belgrade and the Bosnian Serbs to find Mladic and Karadzic, and the ambitions of Serbia and Bosnia to eventually join the EU rest on their willingness to catch and deport them.
Influential Serbian newspaper Danas wrote that the broadcast of the Srebrenica footage and the arrests that followed "point to the determination of the authorities to probe such crimes and guide the public to acknowledge them, instead of fanning illusions that Hague suspects are some kind of national heroes."
Talking to Serbia's daily Blic newspaper, the wife of Branislav Medic, a former paramilitary who was shown in the film and subsequently arrested, said: "We turned on the TV. (Branislav) said we should send our two younger daughters to bed ... The older one watched until the end. She hasn't said a word since. She has just cried."
Bosnian police arrested a suspect yesterday believed to be linked to the killing of six Muslim youths by Serbian paramilitary soldiers shown in the video broadcast.
