STOJAN ZUPLJANIN IDENTITY CONFIRMED, LIED TO POLICE

As a Bosnian Serb police commander in the city of Banja Luka, a former centre of brutal ethnic cleansing, Stojan Zupljanin controlled the Serb-run concentration camps.

Images from the camps in northern Bosnia shocked the world, when television footage of starving Bosniak prisoners evoked memories of Nazi atrocities.

During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Zupljanin was a prominent member of Radovan Karadzic's Bosnian Serb authorities which had organized the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica in which at least 8,000 Bosniaks died.

Zupljanin is charged with crimes against the humanity, including torture and extermination of the Bosniak and Croat population of Bosnian Krajina.

After nine years on the run, Zupljanin, 57, was apprehended by the Serbian police yesterday in an appartment in Pancevo, a town about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Belgrade.

At the time of his arrest, the suspect was in possession of forged personal identification documents issued to the name of Branislav Vukadin, who is believed to be deceased. Zupljanin lied about his identity, so the Court ordered DNA testing to confirm his identity.

Today, the identity of Hague fugitive Stojan Zupljanin has been confirmed on the basis of DNA tests, said Belgrade District Court spokeswoman Ivana Ramic. Zupljanin. According to the Belgrade-based B92 news:

B92 understands that this was his assumed identity, and that Vukadin has been dead for some time. The Hague fugitive's fingerprints, B92 understands, were filed under the name of Branislav Vukadin, which was why a DNA analysis was necessary. His personal ID card with his assumed identity was issued in Backa Palanka. One other fugitive, Vlastimir Đorđević, was also carrying the identity card of a dead man when he was arrested in 2007.

Stojan Zupljanin graduated from being an ordinary police commander to one of the most infamous war-crimes suspects in the former Yugoslavia. He was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1951, studied law at the University of Sarajevo, then joined the secretariat of internal affairs in Banja Luka. In 1985, he became a police department head, then in 1991 took command of the Regional Security Services Centre of Banja Luka.

The U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Zupljanin's arrest or conviction. The Hague Tribunal is still on the hunt for the remaining Serb political and military leaders from Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia, Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic, and Goran Hadzic.