The arrest of Radovan Karadzic is the strongest signal yet that the net is steadily closing in on his military commander, the former General Ratko Mladic.

Mr Mladic, 65, is now the UN war crimes tribunal's most wanted fugitive. He is charged, alongside Dr Karadzic, with war crimes and genocide including the siege of Sarajevo, “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys after the fall of Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, in July 1995.

Squat, bull-necked and radiating belligerence and a messianic belief in the righteousness of his actions, Mr Mladic preferred a muddy trench on the front lines to hobnobbing with diplomats. He and Dr Karadzic loathed each other but were locked in a dark embrace. He viewed Dr Karadzic as a profiteer, growing fat on the Serbs' suffering. Dr Karadzic claimed that Mr Mladic had lost his mind on the front lines.

Both men shared an utter lack of compassion where non-Serbs were concerned and a total disregard for the rules of war. Civilians, including women and children, were the deliberate target of both artillery and snipers. In 1993 during the siege of Srebrenica, the general ordered his commanders shelling the Muslim enclave to “hit the raw meat”.

Until the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000 Mr Mladic was seen regularly in Belgrade. He attended football matches and dined with his army friends in select restaurants, where they ate feasts of fatty lamb washed down with copious, powerful plum brandy. He spent much time at the grave of his daughter Ana, a medical student in Belgrade who committed suicide in March, 1994, at the age of 23.

Ratko Mladic was born on March 12, 1943, in Bozinovici, Bosnia. His parents were both partisans who fought with Tito. His father, Nedja, was killed on his son's second birthday fighting the Croats. He went to school on the outskirts of Belgrade before graduating from a military academy in 1965. He rose rapidly up the ranks of the Yugoslav army (JNA), serving in Macedonia and Kosovo before being sent to Croatia in June 1991 after it declared independence from Yugoslavia.

Mr Mladic was a key figure in transforming the JNA from a defender of the multinational state into becoming the means of its destruction. This was achieved through the Vojna Linija, or “Military Line”, a group of Serb army officers loyal to Mr Milosevic, who saw that Yugoslavia was about to collapse and aimed to annex much of Croatia and Bosnia to Serbia. Their plan was known as “Ram” or “frame”, and was the blueprint for the Greater Serbia project.

The resistance of the multi-ethnic Bosnian capital Sarajevo, defended by a mix of Muslims, Croats and Serbs, especially enraged Mr Mladic. He took a slow and murderous revenge, as this intercept of one of his communications to his officers on the front line shows: “Shell the presidency and the parliament. Shoot at slow intervals until I order you to stop. Target Muslim neighbourhoods - not many Serbs live there ... Shell them until they are on the edge of madness.”

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