Asia

Home page

Asia

Serbian Police Search for Key War Crimes Suspect

09 December 2010 03:46 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Serbian police on Wednesday searched two houses belonging to relatives of fugitive Croatian Serb wartime leader Goran Hadzic, who is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Croatian war of the 1990s, APA reports quoting â€œThe Voice of Americaâ€.

A prosecution statement Wednesday said police searched homes of Hadzic’s close relatives looking for evidence that could lead them to the suspect.

Hadzic was indicted in 2004 by the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and was last seen the same year at his sister’s house in Novi Sad. He is thought to have fled there after being tipped that police were preparing to arrest him.

The arrests of Hadzic and fugitive wartime military leader Ratko Mladic are a key condition for progress on Serbia’s EU accession talks.

Last month, chief war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz said he had urged the Belgrade government to devote more resources to the hunt for Hadzic and Mladic. Brammertz regularly reports to EU officials on Serbian progress in the manhunt, and the EU, in turn, uses those evaluations to decide when and if to begin accession talks with Belgrade.