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Pale: European Union forces supported by Nato yesterday searched the homes of the family and a neighbour of Bosnia's most-wanted war crimes suspect, Radovan Karadzic, looking for clues to his whereabouts, officials said.
Troops began simultaneous searches at the homes of Karadzic's wife, Ljiljana, his daughter, Sonja, and his neighbour Smiljka Popov.
The aim is to find material or information that may help in the ongoing search for war-crimes suspects and to put pressure on networks that support them, said Philip Treloar, a spokesman for the European Union Force (Eufor).
Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic lives in her sister's house in the wartime Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale, 16 kilometers east of Sarajevo. Popov lives in her neighbourhood and Karadzic's daughter Sonja lives with her family in an apartment building, also in Pale.
Genocide
Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, and Ratko Mladic, his military commander, were indicted by the UN War Crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for genocide and other crimes, including the slaughter of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war.
Both have eluded capture since the 1995 indictment. Nato officials believe that is due to a network of supporters who finance and help them to hide.
Mladic is believed to be hiding in Serbia, but there have been no hints about Karadzic's whereabouts for years.
Karadzic's home in Pale, as well as the homes of his children, have been raided many times. Documents have been seized and his family members questioned. But none of those raids and interrogations resulted in Karadzic's arrest.
The US is offering $5m (Dh18,36m) for information that could lead to the arrest of Karadzic, Mladic or two more suspects on the run, Stojan Zupljanin, a Bosnian Serb military leader, and Goran Hadzic, a political leader wanted for war crimes in Croatia.
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