Mladic hollow-cheeked, shrunken after life of run

[May 27, 2011]  BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -- Ratko Mladic suffered two strokes while on the run, has a partially paralyzed right hand and can barely speak, his son said before a Friday hearing on the Bosnian Serb military commander's extradition to face war-crimes charges before a U.N. tribunal.

Serbian war crimes prosecutors say the health issue appeared to be a tactic to delay Mladic's extradition. A tribunal spokeswoman said from The Hague that it was capable of dealing with any health problems.

Son Darko Mladic told reporters after visiting his father in jail: "We will ask that he be transferred to a hospital."

A police photo of Mladic showed him looking hollow-cheeked and shrunken after a decade and a half on the run, a far cry from the beefy commander accused of personally orchestrating some of the worst horrors of the Balkan wars.

The photo taken moments after his arrest in a tiny northern Serbian village shows a clean-shaven Mladic with thinning hair wearing a navy blue baseball hat and looking up with wide eyes, as if in surprise.

After spending a night in jail, Mladic was due back in a Belgrade court for a second hearing on his extradition to to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands on charges that include directing the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, and involvement in the relentless four-year siege of Sarajevo.

A Thursday extradition hearing was adjourned after the judge cut short the questioning because Mladic's "poor physical state" left him unable to communicate, defense lawyer Milos Saljic said.

State TV showed Mladic walking haltingly into the closed-door extradition hearing. Saljic said Mladic needed medical care and "should not be moved in such a state."

Deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said that Mladic, 69, is taking a lot of medicine, but "responds very rationally to everything that is going on."

Vekaric said extradition proceedings should take no more than a week.

"What's important is that his identity has been established," Vekaric said. "It now depends on his defense whether they will launch appeals, but the maximum deadline for his extradition is a week."

Mladic was arrested by intelligence agents in a raid before dawn Thursday at a relative's house in a village in northern Serbia. The act was trumpeted by the government as a victory for a country worthy of European Union membership and Western embrace.

One of the world's most-wanted fugitives, Mladic was the top commander of the Bosnian Serb army during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, which killed more than 100,000 people and drove another 1.8 million from their homes. Thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed, tortured or driven out in a campaign to purge the region of non-Serbs.

He was accused by the Hague tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The residents of the village where Mladic was cought remained defiant.

"I know everybody in this village. Even if we saw him, they would have never been able to find him, if we knew," said Nedeljko Arsic, a local resident "We would have been his slaves and we would have hidden him and they would have never been able to find him and arrest him."

Judge Fouad Riad of the U.N. tribunal said there was evidence against Mladic of "unimaginable savagery."

"Thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers' eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson," Riad said during Mladic's 1995 indictment in absentia.

Bosnians were deeply divided over the arrest of Mladic, with some calling him a "honorable man" and others labeling him a "monster."

The arrest and wartime memories were the main topics of discussion Friday morning. Muslim Bosniaks said they were sorry Mladic was not brought to justice before, while many Serbs claimed he was betrayed by the same people he defended.

The Serbian government, which has changed mightily while Mladic was at large, banned all public gatherings and tightened security in the country to prevent ultra-nationalists from making good on pledges to pour into the streets in protest. There was relatively little unrest overnight.

Hundreds of pro-Mladic demonstrators in the northern city of Novi Sad tried to break into the offices of the governing Democratic Party but were prevented by riot police. At least two people were reported injured.

President Boris Tadic appeared jubilant at a news conference announcing Mladic's capture and a Serbian official close to Tadic told The Associated Press that the president had personally overseen the arrest operation, and compared it to President Barack Obama's involvement in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

But the raid in the village of Lazarevo, 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Belgrade, was no Navy SEAL operation and the Serbian intelligence agents didn't have to fire a shot. Mladic had two pistols with him in the single-story yellow brick house, but put up no resistance, officials said.

"They didn't even wake us up," said a resident who identified himself only as Zoran for fear of retaliation.

He and other residents of the village of 2,000 people insisted they had no idea Mladic was living in their midst -- not that they would have minded.

"I'm furious," Zoran said. "They arrested our hero."

The arrest releases Serbia from the widespread suspicion it was protecting Mladic. U.N. war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz was due next month to give the world body a report critical of Serbia's lack of cooperation with the hunt for Mladic and other fugitives.

The Netherlands had used such reports to justify blocking Serbia's efforts to join the EU, and the arrest could help Serbia shed its image as a pariah state that sheltered the men responsible for the worst atrocities of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Serbia still faces many obstacles to EU membership, and new laws would be required on everything from farming to financial markets. It might also have to recognize the independence of Kosovo, a former Serbian province, and capture another war crimes fugitive, Goran Hadzic. Hadzic, a former leader of Serbs in Croatia, is the last of 161 people sought by the tribunal.

"If the question is whether Serbia is closer today to the European Union than it was yesterday, yes, the answer is absolutely yes," EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele said. But he said other conditions to membership remain.

Among the horrors Mladic is charged with, foremost is the July 1995 slaughter of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, which was supposed to be a safe zone guarded by Dutch peacekeepers.

Mladic seized the town and was seen handing candy to Muslim children in the town's square. He assured them everything would be fine and patted one boy on the head. Hours later, his men began days of killing, rape and torture.

The Dayton accords brought peace to Bosnia in 1995, and the following year Mladic was dismissed from his post. He continued to live in Bosnia, until his trail grew too hot and he moved with his family to Belgrade in the late 1990s, living free in a posh suburban villa.

Even as Mladic allies such as Radovan Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic were brought to The Hague, the former military leader was idolized and sheltered by ultra-nationalists and ordinary Serbs despite a 10 million euro ($14 million) Serbian government bounty, plus $5 million more offered by the U.S. State Department.

Mladic was known to have made daring forays into Belgrade to watch soccer games, dine at plush restaurants and visit his daughter's grave. He refused to give interviews and smiling quizzically when he happened to be photographed.

When Serbia ousted strongman Milosevic in 2000, the new pro-democracy authorities signaled they might hand Mladic over to the tribunal, and he was rumored to have returned to Bosnia. But the flamboyant Mladic went mostly underground in 2002.

Although there were media reports he brazenly used the alias Milorad Komadic, an anagram of his true identity, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic denied it.

Authorities recorded the last trace of Mladic living in Belgrade in January 2006, said Rasim Ljajic, a member of a government team hunting the ex-general.

[Associated Press; By JOVANA GEC]

Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade and Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina contributed to this report.

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