[JURIST] Serbian President Boris Tadic [official website; BBC profile] said Tuesday on the 11th anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre [PBS backgrounder; JURIST news archive] of some 8000 Muslim men and boys that all war criminals should be punished, regardless of their nationality. In a statement, Tjadic said that the "Hague tribunal" - the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] - "must have the same criteria" for everyone, and once again criticized it for sentencing Muslim wartime commander Naser Oric [ICTY case backgrounder; Wikipedia profile] to only two years in prison [JURIST report] for failing to stop the torture and killing of captured Serbs. The ICTY determined that Oric was not directly involved in the abuses.

Tadic's comments came a few days after Serbian Defense Minister Zoran Stankovic [profile, in Serbian] announced that US and British intelligence agents are helping with the search [JURIST report] for indicted UN war crimes suspect and former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic [ICTY backgrounder; JURIST news archive], the alleged mastermind of the Srebrenica operation. The Serbian government insists that it has done everything in its own power to locate Mladic. AP has more.