SERBIA: The wife of Europe's most-wanted man, the Serbian genocide suspect Gen Ratko Mladic, said yesterday that her family was being hounded by the Serbian security services and that several family members had been arrested to encourage Gen Mladic's surrender.
The European Union has given Serbia until the end of the month to arrest and extradite Gen Mladic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
A tribunal spokesman said yesterday that the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, had promised to deliver Gen Mladic by the deadline.
Bosa Mladic, the general's wife, said two of her brothers and another two relatives had been arrested and her son's company had been raided by the Serbian tax police in what she alleged was a campaign of intimidation aimed at securing her husband's arrest.
Gen Mladic was a Bosnian Serb commander and is wanted mainly on genocide charges for the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim males in Srebrenica in July 1995. "I am in shock, I can't believe the pressure being put on us," Mrs Mladic told Belgrade newspaper Kurir.
The allegations of a concerted campaign of intimidation of the Mladic family suggest the Serbian government may be getting serious about arresting the general, a hero to Serbian nationalists and a mass murderer to the Muslims of Bosnia.
The allegations echo events in the run-up to last year's arrest of Croatia's most-wanted war crimes suspect, Ante Gotovina.