BELGRADE, Serbia — Ratko Mladic was captured in a routine raid as he headed out to his garden for a pre-dawn walk, three Serbian police officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
The officials said they had no specific intelligence indicating that Mladic was in the house, which belonged to a relative, before they burst into four houses in the village of Lazarevo simultaneously.
They said Mladic identified himself immediately, speaking in a whisper, and was carrying two pistols that he handed over to police.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
They said four white jeeps carrying about two dozen masked special Serbian policemen drove slowly into Lazarevo, a remote northern Serbian village, at 5 a.m. Thursday when most of its 2,000 people were still asleep. It was the first time Serbian police had raided the village, the officials said.
Mladic was awake inside a yellow brick house with a rusty white fence, unable to sleep because his body ached from ailments he has suffered over the 16 years he had spent on the run from justice, the officials said.
The wartime Bosnian Serb army commander was charged by a U.N. war crimes tribunal with orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern enclave of Srebrenica — the worst carnage in Europe since World War II.
The police officials said they had learned that Mladic moved into the largely Bosnian Serb village of Lazarevo about a year ago, figuring he could be safe with his relatives there.
Mladic was about to venture into the grassy yard for some fresh air when four men in masks and black fatigues without insignia jumped over the fence and burst into the house, grabbing the frail-looking man and forcing him to the floor face down.