A probe into the mysterious shooting of two soldiers has revealed the existence beneath the Serbian capital of a secret communist-era network of tunnels and bunkers that could have served as recent hideouts for some of the world's most-wanted war crimes suspects. The 2-square-mile complex - dubbed a "concrete underground city" by the local media - was built deep inside a rocky hill in a residential area of Belgrade in the 1960s on the orders of communist strongman Josip Broz Tito. Until recently its existence was known only to senior military commanders and politicians. The secret was revealed during an investigation this month into the deaths of two soldiers who were guarding an entrance to the complex. Both were found fatally shot.Official explanations of the Oct. 5 incident have failed to satisfy the soldiers' families or a skeptical media, sparking speculation that fugitive Bosnian officers wanted by the United Nations for atrocities during the 1990s Balkans wars may have sought refuge in the complex, which was originally designed to resist nuclear attack. "My son died because he saw some big secret," Petar Milovanovic, the father of one of the two soldiers, said recently. "They had to die to take the secret to the grave with them." The army initially said the two soldiers shot each other, then backtracked and reported that one had murdered the other before committing suicide. An independent commission is now investigating. The circumstances surrounding the deaths - and any link with high-profile war crimes fugitives such as Gen. Ratko Mladic - remain murky. But the probe has shed light on a complex that was once so secret military men here say NATO didn't even suspect its existence when it bombed Serbia in 1999.
| Yeah, right |
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is believed to have convened his war Cabinet there in 1999 while NATO bombs fell on his country for 78 days to punish him for cracking down on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The complex is so well designed that Yugoslav construction firms were reportedly hired by deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to build a duplicate bunker near his hometown of Tikrit in the 1980s. It would appear the ideal hiding place for a fugitive like Mladic, who is believed to have the support of Milosevic-era generals still commanding the army. The Bosnian Serb army chief was indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands for the 1995 massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, Bosnia.
| Don't think so, too easy to corner someone down there. |