BOSNIAN state television has broadcast several video clips it says show war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic living freely in Serbia, despite genocide charges filed against him by a United Nations tribunal in 1995.
Sarajevo-based TV Federacije did not say where it got the video footage it aired late on Wednesday on its 60 Minutes programme. But a Serbian official said it was among material impounded last December from Mladic's Belgrade home, and handed over t
o UN prosecutors.
Mladic, the commander of Bosnian Serb forces in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, was charged with genocide in 1995 by the UN war crimes tribunal for his role in the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims – the worst carnage in Europe since the Second World War.
The TV station said the home videos were taken over a period of years, one as recently as 2008. But Belgrade officials insisted yesterday that the most recent was filmed in 2001, when Mladic was last seen in public before disappearing.
Pro-western leaders in Belgrade have insisted they do not know where the former army commander is, although their recent investigation revealed he had been hiding in different flats in a new part of Belgrade as recently as 2006.
His capture is a condition for Serbian progress toward membership of the European Union.
Some of the footage showed Mladic singing Serbian folk songs and dancing at weddings and private parties, as well as receiving guests at his house in Belgrade or cuddling his baby granddaughter.
A video dated September 2000 showed him at a wedding party for one of his bodyguards in a restaurant near Sarajevo that is located close to the main Nato base in Bosnia.
Another depicts him slowly walking on a snow-covered mountain path with a cane, looking significantly older than in other footage.
One of the amateur videos, apparently taken by someone from within his family circle, shows him sitting in peaceful wooded surroundings of what the television station said were Serbian army barracks.
Rasim Ljajic, the Serbian government official in charge of relations with the UN tribunal, said at an urgently called news conference that the footage was part of the material that was impounded last December from Mladic's Belgrade home, and handed over to UN prosecutors.
Olga Kavran, a spokeswoman for the UN tribunal's prosecutor, confirmed that the prosecution possessed the same Mladic videos, but she refused to comment on their context to avoid jeopardising the search for the fugitive.
Mr Ljajic alleged that the release of the videos had been designed to "minimise a recent positive assessment about Serbia's co-operation with the Hague tribunal" by United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton and chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz.
"This is no coincidence," Mr Ljajic declared. "The timing suggests it was not done with good intention."
He was referring to Serbia's efforts to persuade the Netherlands to allow the implementation of a EU deal with Serbia even though Mladic is not in jail.
The country intensified its efforts to arrest Mladic last year, investigating his financial support network and inspecting possible hideouts, in the hope of winning visa-free status with EU member states following the successful capture of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.
Karadzic was discovered posing as an alternative healer, living under disguise in Belgrade. He was arrested almost a year ago and is currently on trial in the Netherlands.
EU foreign ministers are expected discuss Serbia's progress in co-operating with the Hague tribunal on Monday.
