The family of runaway Hague tribunal indictee Ratko Mladic plans to ask a Serbian court to declare Mladic dead, a decision which the chairman of the Serbian council in charge of cooperation with the Hague tribunal, Rasim Ljajic, said "makes a mockery of state institutions", the Belgrade media reported on Tuesday.
The Mladic family's attorney, Milos Saljic, told Vecernje Novosti daily that the family was close to completing arrangements with lawyers who, by the end of the month, would submit a request to a Belgrade court to declare Mladic dead.
Saljic said that the decision of Mladic's family was not prompted only by reasons of frozen property, but also by the persecution the family was exposed to on a daily basis.
The attorney said that the court procedure to declare a person dead can be launched if the person in question is older than 70 and if there has been no reliable data on his whereabouts for more than five years.
The chairman of the national council in charge of cooperation with the Hague tribunal, Rasim Ljajic, said that by making such a request Mladic's family "is making a mockery of state institutions" and that the request would in no way affect the ongoing search for Mladic.
Serbian Deputy War Crimes Prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said that the action plan for Mladic's arrest was being implemented regardless of statements by attorneys or Mladic's family.
The 68-year-old former Bosnian Serb army commander is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. He is charged with genocide, together with Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and for the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
Mladic is still on the run, while Karadzic was arrested in Serbia in July 2008 and has been in custody in The Hague.
