Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic, the last of the three men accused of instigating the ethnic cleansing during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, was arrested on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Mladic, accused of planning the mass murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a cruel 43-month siege of Sarajevo, will face trial on genocide charges in the Hague. The European officials are expecting his exile within 10 days, said the Reuters' report.

On behalf of the Republic of Serbia I can announce the arrest of Ratko Mladic. The extradition process is under way, Serbian President Boris Tadic told reporters in Belgrade.

Mladic was arrested in the village of Lazarevo, near the northeastern town of Zrenjanin around 100 km (60 miles) from the capital Belgrade in the early hour of Thursday, a police official said. The once widely feared general was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, the police official added.

Meanwhile, several dozen nationalists and soccer hooligans, who idolize Mladic, rallied in downtown Belgrade to protest the arrest. This shameful arrest of a Serb general is a blow to our national interests and the state, Reuters quoted Boris Aleksic, a spokesman for the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party as saying.

RELATED STORIES
Criminal Law