The wartime Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic, who has been indicted by a UN tribunal for war crimes and genocide, is hiding near the eastern Bosnian town of Foca, a local newspaper reported yesterday.
The daily Dnevni Avaz said Dr Karadzic and his bodyguards had been staying in two houses outside Foca for a month, after leaving the nearby town of Visegrad where he was believed to have been hiding during the previous six months. Both towns are still controlled by Bosnian Serb nationalist hard liners.
"The most wanted war crimes suspect has found a new refuge," said the newspaper.
The daily, regarded as being close to the main Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA), gave no sources for the report. Foca lies 55 km east of Sarajevo and is notorious for allegedly harbouring several other Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects.
Dr Karadzic was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia for the three-year siege of Sarajevo and for orchestrating the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995.
Dnevni Avaz said Dr Karadzic had decided to find a new hiding place after the US reportedly said that it would pay up to $5 million for any information that might lead to the arrest of several most wanted war crimes suspects in the world.
A senior adviser to Mr Alija Izetbegovic, a member of the Bosnian Muslim presidency, said earlier this month that Dr Karadzic was believed to be hiding in eastern Bosnia. Mr Mirza Hajric also said he hoped French troops of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia, who patrol that part of the country, would arrest him.