Serbia: Wife of war crimes fugitive Mladic claims he is dead

Belgrade, 5 April (AKI) - The wife of Serbian war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, Bosiljka, said on Tuesday she hasn’t heard from him for the past ten years and claimed he was dead.

“He’s had three brain strokes and needed intensive care,” she told a Belgrade court. “If he were alive he would have found a way to get in touch with us,” she added.

Mladic’s wife is on trial for illegal possession of weapons found during a search of her Belgrade apartment in December 2008. She claimed the weapons belonged to Mladic and she new nothing about it.

Mladic has been accused by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on eleven counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He and a wartime leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, Goran Hadzic, are the only two fugitives wanted by the tribunal still at large.

Mladic’s family initiated legal proceedings to declare him dead, allegedly to dispose with his pension and property, but the court turned down the request.

Bosiljka told the court on Tuesday she wanted him declared dead not because of property, but to prevent her family from being “terrorized” by the authorities. “They have been following me for the past five years, even when I take my granddaughter to nursery or visit family in Macedonia,” she said.

A group of Mladic’s supporters, belonging to ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, protested in front of the court carrying banners reading “General, don’t give in!” and “Stop terrorizing Mladic’s family!”

The European Union has conditioned Serbia’s advances towards EU membership on the arrest of Mladic and Hadzic. The authorities have vowed they would be arrested and handed over to the tribunal as soon as they were located