BELGRADE, Serbia, April 5 (UPI) -- Serbian authorities know where the country's top war crimes suspect, Ratko Mladic, is hiding, a senior official told the Financial Times.
"They know if he is in Serbia, and they know if he is not," Serbia and Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic told the newspaper in an interview published Tuesday. "They are paid to know."
Mladic, who is accused of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in which 7,500 Muslims were killed, has been on the run since the Bosnian war ended. Draskovic said Mladic needed such "protection" from security services to survive.
Mladic, along with former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, faces 16 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of the laws of war. They are both believed to be hiding either in Serbia-Montenegro or the Bosnian Serb Republic.
Both are wanted by the U.N.-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is based in The Hague. The tribunal is also trying former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
