Fugitives are heroes to defiant villagers

'Most wanted' men are still being shielded, reports Julius Strauss in Bozinovici

6 June 2001

HIGH in the Hercegovinan mountains, in the village where Gen Ratko Mladic was born, most of the baby boys have been christened Ratko. For these hardline Serbs, whose families have lived off this rocky landscape for hundreds of years, it is a mark of ultimate respect.

"He is the best man in the world and the best general," said Dalibor, a cousin of one of the world's most wanted men, who still works the sloping fields around Bozinovici. "They say he is a criminal but he saved the women and children of Srebrenica and gave them bread."

Five years ago Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, were indicted on charges of genocide. They are accused of besieging Sarajevo and butchering more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica in 1995.

They are still at large, shielded by bodyguards and hidden by farmers and tradesmen who consider them national heroes.

Mladic's brother, Milivoje, was buried last week in the Serb part of Sarajevo. His coffin was covered with orange, red and yellow bouquets and wheat mash with sugar as is the Serbian custom. The funeral drew a large crowd but his notorious older brother was not among the mourners.

South, along a winding road into old Hercegovina, Mladic's home village lies a few miles outside the sleepy town of Kalinovik up a rocky path barely navigable by car.

Had Mladic been in the village, villagers were asked time and again yesterday. The answers were evasive. Then 11-year-old Marko piped up: "Of course he has. He bought me a puppy only the other day." The adults looked at him angrily.

Nato has patrolled Bosnia for five years but no serious attempt has been made to arrest Mladic and Karadzic, which Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal, has called "scandalous".

In the early years after the war they barely bothered to hide. Mladic spent his time at Bosnian Serb army headquarters near the village of Han Pijesak issuing orders. Originally built by Tito as Yugoslavia's last redoubt in case of invasion, the sprawling underground bunker gave him ample room to avoid inspections by Nato.

Karadzic lived under the noses of French and Italian peacekeepers in Pale, the picturesque ski resort that had served as the nerve centre of the Bosnian Serb war machine.

Each day he commuted in a limousine with smoked windows to the Famos factory where he had his office. Later, as international pressure grew for Nato to make an arrest, the two men went to ground.

Sightings have placed Mladic in Belgrade and Karadzic flitting between the eastern Bosnian town of Foca and the mountains of southern Hercegovina.

In the absence of facts, rumours took over. Karadzic was said to have shaved his head and donned the robes of an Orthodox priest and to travel in an ambulance.

Mladic almost certainly lived in Belgrade until recently, attending football matches and eating in well-known restaurants. But insiders say he returned to Bosnia more than a month ago when it became clear that Serbia would co-operate with The Hague.

In Pale, at Karadzic's former home, a three-storey family house, the wrought iron gate is chained shut and weeds are growing through the patio.

Karadzic's wife, Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic, still lives in Pale in a new house in the most exclusive part of town. Yesterday she said rumours that her husband was preparing to give himself up were nonsense.

The rest of Karadzic's family has moved away. Sonja, his daughter who owns a radio station that refuses to play Muslim or Croat music, and Sasa, his wayward son who has taken to consorting with gangsters, now spend nearly all their time in Belgrade. "It has been years since I have seen Karadzic," said Slobodan Savic, a former associate.

So where are the world's two most wanted men? Only a handful of Serbs, and perhaps Nato command, know. The clever money puts Karadzic in southern Hercegovina somewhere near the nationalist town of Gacko. There is also a popular theory that he hides in the Orthodox monastery near the village of Donje Crkvice just across the Montenegrin border.

Mladic is probably protected by the Bosnian Serb army - perhaps in a military compound near Zepa, a UN-protected enclave he overran in 1995.

As for Nato, sources say it is finally stepping up efforts to track the two men. This year a French snatch squad was reported to have arrived in Bosnia.

But in the towering mountains where Mladic and Karadzic were born, villagers say the two men will outsmart the West. "You will never catch them," Mladic's cousin, Dalibor, said. "They are Serb peasants - more cunning than all the world put together."