BBC news 2011-05-27 加文本

BBC news 2011-05-27

BBC News with Zoe Diamond

The former Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladic has been arrested by police in Serbia 16 years after he was indicted for alleged war crimes during the Bosnian conflict. The Serbian President Boris Tadic said General Mladic was detained in the north of the country. Mark Lowen reports from the Serbian capital Belgrade.

It was an early morning raid on a house in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina which captured the former Bosnian Serb commander in an operation by the country's security services. The arrest of Ratko Mladic brings to an end to the hunt for one of the world's most wanted men. He is charged with genocide and other war crimes from the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s, notably of orchestrating the massacre of over 7,000 Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War. But this is also a hugely important moment for Serbia's hopes of joining the European Union, which were dependent on Mladic's capture.

Hours after the announcement of his arrest, crowds gathered in a central square in Belgrade, calling for the general's release. Ratko Mladic has appeared at a special court in Belgrade where an investigative judge will decide whether to extradite him to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Serbian television showed footage of the 69-year-old suspect looking frail and walking slowly. His defence lawyer said that the hearing was cut short because of his client's poor physical state.

The arrest of General Mladic has been widely acclaimed overseas. President Obama said that he hoped the families of General Mladic's victims would find some solace in the arrest. But Ratko Mladic also has many supporters in Serbia. Social media sites on the Internet suggest that they do not want him to be sent to The Hague tribunal. Nenad Vukicevic, who runs a Serbian nationalist website, believes that General Mladic would not get a fair trial.

"Reconciliation is impossible when the basis for reconciliation is injustice, and The Hague has shown many times in the past decade that it's a court which has nothing to do with justice and legitimacy. It's illegitimate, and it's served the will and purpose of the Western powers to implement their version of history of what happened here."

The United Nations court for Rwanda says a top genocide suspect has been arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The man, Bernard Munyagishari, is accused of being a mastermind in the killing of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Here's Will Ross.

Bernard Munyagishari had been on the run for 17 years, but was apprehended in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where many who took part in the 1994 genocide have been hiding and causing misery for the Congolese population. Mr Munyagishari, who was once a teacher and a football referee, now faces charges of genocide, murder and rape. He's expected to be handed over to the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

World News from the BBC

The Nato-led international force in Afghanistan say that seven American soldiers have been killed in a single incident. They died when two roadside bombs exploded in southern Afghanistan. From Kabul, here's Quentin Sommerville.

The troops were on a foot patrol in the south of the country when they triggered two IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. The Nato-led mission has released few other details, but this is a heavy loss from one incident. IEDs are widely used by the Taliban and account for most of the casualties in Afghanistan. Soldiers fighting here are well protected from the bombs when they are in their vehicles, but foot patrols allow troops to get closer to the population and the enemy.

The United States Supreme Court has upheld a law in the state of Arizona which gives its courts the power to shut down businesses that employ illegal migrants. In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court rejected arguments by businesses, civil rights groups and the Obama administration that Arizona's law was in conflict with federal legislation.

Researchers have discovered that Arctic reindeer can see ultraviolet light that would blind humans. The lead researcher says that the animals may have evolved ways of protecting their retinas against the kind of extreme exposure to UV light common in the Arctic. Here's Neil Bowdler.

Bees, bats and rodents, to name but a few, can see what humans can't - ultraviolet light. This international team wanted to see whether Arctic reindeer could too, and so subjected the animal to various optical tests. What they found was that reindeer do indeed have UV vision. The researchers suggest they might use this power to pick out food and predators in the "white-out" of the Arctic winter and the twilight of the spring and autumn. Other specialists in the field even suggest UV vision may turn out to be the rule rather than the exception in the animal kingdom.

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