July 5, 2001
Ratko Mladic was Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's army chief throughout the Bosnian war. Along with Mr Karadzic he has come to symbolise the Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing of Croats and Muslims and is one of the most wanted suspects from the Bosnia conflict. He has been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity - including the massacre of thousands of Muslim men from the town of Srebrenica in 1995.
Having lived freely in Belgrade for some time, Mr Mladic left when former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested on 1 April and his whereabouts are currently unknown.
Overall commander
Mr Mladic was appointed commander of the 9th Corps of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in Knin in the Republic of Croatia in 1991. He was promoted in May 1992 and assumed overall command of the Bosnian Serb army. Mr Mladic is considered to have been one of the prime movers in the siege of Sarajevo and led the Serb onslaught against the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
Bosnian Serb forces had laid siege to the Srebrenica enclave, where tens of thousands of civilians had taken refuge from earlier Serb offensives in north-eastern Bosnia.
Men and boys separated
The Serb forces bombarded Srebrenica with heavy shelling and rocket fire for five days before Mr Mladic entered the town accompanied by Serb camera crews. The next day buses arrived to take the women and children sheltering in Srebrenica to Muslim territory, while the Serbs separated out all men from age 12 to 77 for "interrogation for suspected war crimes".
The unarmed men were then murdered - in the five days after Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys are thought to have been killed. After the end of the Bosnian war, Mr Mladic returned to Belgrade, enjoying the open support and protection of Mr Milosevic.
In hiding
He lived openly in the city - visiting public places, eating in expensive restaurants and even attending football matches. But following Mr Milosevic's arrest in he left his villa for an unknown destination. He is believed to be in Republika Srpska - the autonomous Serb area of Bosnia - or to have taken refuge in the mountains of Montenegro.
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