RATKO MLADIC, the former Bosnian Serb military commander indicted for war crimes, has escaped capture by Nato forces for eight years because he has been protected by the Serb and Bosnian Serb militaries, documents obtained by The Times conclusively demonstrate.

The documents, which include his military file, show that General Mladic remained a member of the Army until February 2002, more than six years after he was indicted for war crimes including genocide. He still receives a military pension of about £250 a month.

The documents show that General Mladic has returned to what was his military headquarters — barely an hour from the Nato headquarters in Sarajevo — on several occasions to drink with his old colleagues on their birthdays and join them on hunting expeditions.

They also show that General Mladic, who is believed to have spent most of his fugitive years in Serbia, was advised to leave that country after it elected a pro-Western President, Boris Tadic, in June. He slipped across the border into Bosnia.

Acting on that intelligence, Nato conducted a big operation on July 1 to capture him. But he again slipped the net, apparently with the help of members of the Bosnian Serb military, to whom he remains a hero.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, the chief international envoy to Bosnia, told The Times yesterday: “Rather than hunting down war criminals, this information indicates that certain Bosnian Serb institutions, as recently as this summer, are actively protecting war criminals. This shouldn’t be allowed to continue and will jeopardise Bosnia’s attempts to join the EU and Nato.”

Next week Lord Ashdown is expected to announce measures against Bosnian Serb institutions, including the military, for their failure to act against indicted war criminals.

General Mladic was the Bosnian Serb army chief during the Bosnian war of 1992-95. When that war began the Yugoslav Army divided into factions — Bosnian Serb and Serb. Mladic, together with Radovan Karadzic — who was the Bosnian Serb President — is accused of leading the “ethnic cleansing” campaign against Bosnia’s Croats and Muslims. The two are among Europe’s most wanted men.

In 1995 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague indicted General Mladic for war crimes, including that year’s massacre of as many as 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica. He went on the run in 1997.

Despite that indictment, his military file shows that he remained a member of the Yugoslav People’s Army until 2001, and was released from professional military service only in February 2002. He was removed from the “registry of professional soldiers of the Army of Yugoslavia as of 16 June, 2001” only by decree of President Kostunica. He was finally released from professional military service on February 28, 2002. It is unclear whether he was still receiving a salary, but Mr Tadic, now the Serbian President, has confirmed that he continues to receive a pension.

Mr Tadic said the payments were mandated by law. “If Ratko Mladic was in The Hague, which I believe will happen, and if he were proved guilty, he would still have a pension,” he said.

The Bosnian Serb and Serbian authorities deny knowledge of Mladic’s whereabouts, but diplomatic sources in Sarajevo have told The Times that he has often visited underground military bunkers used by the Bosnian Serb Army at Han Pijesak, near Sarajevo.

“The international community knows that he has returned to this shelter on several occasions over the past few years, particularly for drinking sessions with his men to celebrate birthdays and Army Day (June 28,” an assessment of his movements said. It was in that shelter that General Mladic took refuge when he left Serbia after Mr Tadic’s election. “He was moved to a shelter because of concerns about his safety. He was being hidden and protected by the Bosnian Serb Army in June and July, 2004,” according to the diplomatic assessment.

The shelter, known as Veliki Zep, was built in the Communist era. Its tunnels and caves lead out into forests. The Nato operation conducted after General Mladic’s departure from Serbia involved a search of Veliki Zep, and roadblocks on the border. It is understood that General Mladic’s bodyguards are chosen from the barracks at Han Pijesak. The military file has other details about General Mladic’s career, from when he joined the Yugoslav Army in 1965. He was an “excellent” pupil during a reconnaissance course completed in 1967.

He learnt Russian at school and military academy, and the file traces his promotions until the time he became commander of Bosnian Serb forces surrounding Sarajevo in 1992. He was made to swear an oath of loyalty which included the phrase: “I will consciously carry out all orders from superiors. I will always be ready to fight for the freedom and honour of the homeland and not regret giving up my life in that fight.”

THE CASE AGAINST RATKO MLADIC

General Ratko Mladic was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTJ) in July 1995 on 15 counts between May 1992 and December 1996. The ICTJ says that General Mladic:

Was responsible for the campaign of persecutions, which included acts of genocide, after the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995, by forcibly transferring Bosnian Muslim women and children from the Srebrenica enclave to Kladanj; capturing and detaining, summarily executing, and burying thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica; and exercising command and control over an organised and comprehensive operation designed to conceal the execution campaign by exhuming bodies from the initial mass graves and reburying them en masse in isolated secondary locations”

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