Serb war crimes fugitive Tolimir arrested

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, May 31 (UPI) -- Bosnian police have arrested Bosnian Serb fugitive Zdravko Tolimir, who was sought on genocide charges by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague.

Tolimir was the key aide of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic during ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia from 1991-95 and in the postwar period when he was organizing hideouts for both of them, Belgrade's B92 radio said Thursday.

Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the U.N. tribunal in The Hague welcomed the arrest of Tolimir and said she hoped the other two top fugitives, Mladic and former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic would be apprehended soon, the Serbian news agency Beta said.

Del Ponte's spokeswoman Olga Kavran said the tribunal's prosecutors consider Tolimir responsible for genocide and other war crimes at Srebrenica when Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian town in July 1995. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed a massacre at Srebrenica.

Serbian police in cooperation with Bosnian Serb officers arrested Tolimir while he tried to cross the Bosnia-Herzegovina border at the eastern town of Ljubovija Thursday.