Attention turns to last fugitive after Mladic arrest: Goran Hadzic

Ex-leader of Croation-Serb rebels rumoured to be hiding in SerbianOrthodox monasteries in the idyllic setting of the Fruska Gora mountain

The ex-leader of Croatian Serb rebels, Goran Hadzic, was a minor figure on the UN war crimes court’s most-wanted list in the Balkans, but now he has risen to the top rank as the last remaining fugitive.

With the arrest of wartime Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic last Thursday, Mr Hadzic, considered more of a footnote in the history of the bloody conflicts that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s, was thrust into the spotlight.

Serbian President Boris Tadic stressed on Thursday that Mr Hadzic, a Serbian leader during the 1991-95 Croatian war, would be arrested “as soon as he is found”.

“Our priority now becomes the search for Goran Hadzic, the only remaining fugitive,” deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said.

“The action team that has found Mr Mladic will remain the same and we will not stop until Mr Hadzic is tracked down, arrested and sent to The Hague.”

He is the last of the 161 people indicted by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia who is still on the run.

Soon after Mr Mladic’s arrest a joke began doing the rounds in Belgrade portraying Mr Hadzic as the last man standing in the popular Survivor television show.

While Serbia has carried out several searches this year in the homes of alleged Mr Hadzic helpers, the main effort has always been focused on Mr Mladic.

Mr Hadzic, 52, is believed to be in Serbia and rumoured to be hiding in Serbian Orthodox monasteries in the idyllic setting of the Fruska Gora mountain near the northern city of Novi Sad.

Another often-heard theory is that he is somewhere in Russia.

A source close to the invest-igation recently said that he was tracked down in Russia in the past several years but fled as soon as the information was sent to the authorities there.

His son Srecko Hadzic told the press on Sunday that he expected pressure on his family would increase.

“We have not had searches (of our property) in the last few days but that is not to say we won’t have them soon,” the 23-year-old was quoted as saying.

“I wake every 30 minutes, at every sound, thinking they (the police) have come back,” he said.

“I want to ask (my father) how much longer this will go on. Just to know where we stand.”

The siege of Vukovar and the subsequent massacre is one of the darkest periods in the 1991-95 Croatian war.

At the end of the conflict in Croatia, Mr Hadzic moved to Novi Sad in Serbia’s northern Vojvodina province bordering Croatia. Mr Hadzic, a father of three, worked there as a senior adviser in the state-owned NIS oil company.

He remained in that position until 2004 when he fled just hours after the UN court revealed the existence of a secret indictment to the Serbian authorities.

Profile

• Goran Hadzic is wanted on charges that Croatian Serb troops under his command killed 250 Croats and other non-Serbs taken from a hospital in Vukovar after the city fell to Serbian troops following an almost three-month siege in November 1991.

• Mr Hadzic, 52, a former warehouse employee at an agricultural plant and a member of the Yugoslav League of Communists since his youth, rose to become President of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) in Croatia between 1992-1993.

• Chosen for the post with the backing of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Mr Hadzic was seen as a “yes man” who wielded little real power compared with other wartime Serb leaders.

• At the head of the RSK, established by rebel Serbs who opposed Croatia’s proclamation of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Mr Hadzic is held responsible for a campaign of terror against Croats and other non-Serbs in the border region between Serbia and Croatia.

• He faces 14 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes for the murders of hundreds of people and the deportation of tens of thousands Croats from the area he controlled.

• The 10-page indictment also details how Mr Hadzic let the feared Arkan’s Tigers paramilitaries of notorious warlord Zjelko Raznatovic beat, torture and kill non-Serb civilians held by units under Hadzic’s control.