Mladic is wanted for genocide and war crimes during his time as a Serb commander from 1992-95[EPA]

Officers armed with automatic weapons entered the Vujic Valjevo plastics factory on Monday morning on the orders of Serbia's war crimes prosecutors, local media reports said.

"Under the orders of the war crimes prosecution, the interior ministry is conducting a search of the Vujic Valjevo factory," an interior ministry source said.

"We are verifying information according to which Mladic could be there."

Citing unnamed high-ranking officials from the interior ministry, local media sources said security services were also hunting for people thought to have helped Mladic avoid justice.

Vujic Valjevo is a large Serbia company that manufacturers windows and bottled water. Sources said police were also searching houses occupied by its management.

Wanted for genocide

Mladic, 66, has been wanted since 1995 by the United Nation's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, where Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb president, now is on trial.

The former commander of the Bosnian Serb military forces has been indicted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

He notably faces charges relating to the siege of Sarajevo, which claimed more than 10,000 lives, and for the Srebrenica massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995.

Serbia's co-operation with the United Nations war crimes tribunal based in The Hague is a key condition for its closer ties with the European Union, which the new pro-Western government hopes to join by 2014.

Last month, Serbia said it had intensified its hunt for Mladic before of an expected visit by Serge Brammertz, the UN tribunal's chief prosecutor.

Co-operation with the tribunal involves the arrest and transfer to The Hague of Mladic and the only other remaining fugitive war crimes suspect, Goran Hadzic, a wartime Croatian Serb leader.

Mladic remains at large despite several similiar operations in the past few years.

Karadzic was arrested in July on a bus in Belgrade, where he had been living incognito as a bearded alternative medicine guru.

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: