The family of wanted war criminal Ratko Mladic are asking a Belgrade court to declare him dead. Confirming the news to Serbian newspaper Vecernje Novosti, the family's lawyer, Milos Saljic, says the request is not primarily motivated by the former Bosnian-Serb general's inheritance. The family say they are mainly tired of the raids and interrogations they are subjected to by the Serbian police on an almost daily basis.
 
The former general is still on the run. He is wanted by the Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague for war crimes committed during the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995. Ratko Mladic was the commander of the Bosnian-Serb army and is seen as one of the main perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in the region, most notoriously the massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys following the fall of the UN enclave of Srebrenica.
 
Radovan Karadzic, the political leader of the Bosnian-Serbs during the conflict, was arrested in July 2008 and is currently on trial at the Yugoslavia Tribunal. Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who also faced charges of genocide, died behind bars in the Netherlands on 11 March 2006 before a verdict could be pronounced in his case.
 
The family of Ratko Mladic say they reckon he may indeed be dead. He has been the target of an intensive seven-year manhunt and they believe the appalling conditions he has had to face while on the run may have proved fatal. It is remarkable that, to date, no compelling evidence of his whereabouts has ever been found.