Indicted war criminal and former Serb general Ratko Mladic has brazenly eluded capture for 13 years, living the comfortable life of a pensioner in Belgrade. Politicians, the army and -- it now appears -- Western intelligence services have been helping him the whole time. The Luda Kuca café is located on Yuri Gagarin Street in New Belgrade, a satellite town of concrete high-rise apartment blocks. Luda Kuca means "crazy house" -- a fitting name for the café. Until recently, one of its regulars was a bearded faith-healer with a penchant for singing Serb hymns late at night as he sat at one of the café's three tables. The singer's name was Radovan Karadzic. Today the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs is in jail in The Hague facing trial for war crimes. Nothing has changed in Luda Kuca since Karadzic stopped coming. His picture still hangs on the wall alongside portraits of Serbian ex-president Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief who has been on the run since 1995, when an international warrant was issued for his arrest. Mladic stands accused of crimes against humanity for the slaughter of thousands of Muslims during the Bosnian War. The stocky former general was once hailed as a hero. Today most Serbs would rather see him in the dock alongside Karadzic and all the others.
Indicted war criminal and former Serb general Ratko Mladic has brazenly eluded capture for 13 years, living the comfortable life of a pensioner in Belgrade. Politicians, the army and -- it now appears -- Western intelligence services have been helping him the whole time.
The Luda Kuca café is located on Yuri Gagarin Street in New Belgrade, a satellite town of concrete high-rise apartment blocks. Luda Kuca means "crazy house" -- a fitting name for the café. Until recently, one of its regulars was a bearded faith-healer with a penchant for singing Serb hymns late at night as he sat at one of the café's three tables. The singer's name was Radovan Karadzic. Today the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs is in jail in The Hague facing trial for war crimes.
Nothing has changed in Luda Kuca since Karadzic stopped coming. His picture still hangs on the wall alongside portraits of Serbian ex-president Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief who has been on the run since 1995, when an international warrant was issued for his arrest. Mladic stands accused of crimes against humanity for the slaughter of thousands of Muslims during the Bosnian War. The stocky former general was once hailed as a hero. Today most Serbs would rather see him in the dock alongside Karadzic and all the others.
