Goran Hadzic in Spotlight After Mladic Arrest

Serbian Deputy War Crimes Prosecutor Bruno Vekaric told media following the arrest of Mladic that search for the remaining fugitive wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague is now the country's priority, explaining that the Action Team will not halt its efforts until Goran Hadzic is captured.

Hadzic, the wartime leader of the Serbs in Croatia, has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes committed during the conflict there in the early 1990s.

He has been in hiding since being indicted by the Tribunal in June 2004.

Hadzic, who was born in Croatia in 1958, worked as a warehouseman before the war. In the early years of the conflict in Croatia, Hadzic served as the president of the self-declared Serbian Republic of Krajina.

Hadzic is charged with trying to remove Croats from the parts of Croatia claimed by ethnic Serbs as part of a joint criminal enterprise. He faces allegations of the persecution, detention, and murder of hundreds of Croats, as well as the deportation or forced transfer of tens of thousands of Croats and other non-Serbs, among other charges.

Serbian police conducted its last publicly announced search for Hadzic in December at the residence where the suspect lived before going into hiding, and at a house owned by his sister in Novi Sad.

Meanwhile, Hadzic's family has expressed their frustration with the fact that there will be more searches and pressure on them as Hadzic has now become the Action Team's priority.

Goranka Meseldzija, Hadzic's sister, admitted in an interview with Serbian newspaper Vecernje Novosti this week that the news of the Mladic arrest had shaken them.

"We have all already passed the point of despair, and this [Mladic arrest] has given us all a gloomy tone," she told the daily, noting that she doesn't know what is going to happen but that the family is ready for anything.

Srecko Hadzic, son of the remaining war crimes fugitive, expects the pressure on the family to now increase.

"I am convinced that pressure on my family can only increase, not decrease of course," he said, adding that since last December no one has contacted them.

According to Srecko Hadzic, his family has faced trouble ever since the warrant was issued for his father's arrest seven years ago. He claims that they are unable to find job, and that his aunt, Goranka, was recently fired from her work because she is Goran's sister.

"The financial situation we are living in is extremely difficult and we have only our grandmother's pension. Pressure is growing, we try to endure as much as we can, but do not know how long, really. I wake up every half hour, at every noise, thinking there they are again," said Srecko Hadzic.