WASHINGTON, DC – The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) welcomed the Serbian government’s arrest, today, of Ratko Mladic, a former Serbian General who spent 15 years as a fugitive from justice after being charged in 1995 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War.

“We join Armenians throughout the United States and around the world in welcoming today’s arrest by the Serbian government of indicted genocide perpetrator General Ratko Mladic,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “The differences between Serbia’s and Turkey’s response to genocide could not be greater: The Serbian government, to its credit, has acknowledged the truth of its own history and accepted moral and legal responsibility for past crimes, while Turkey – with the complicity of the U.S. government – continues to evade the truth and escape its moral and material responsibilities for the Armenian Genocide.”

The White House, earlier today, congratulated the Serbian government for arresting Mladic. Speaking on behalf of the Obama Administration, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who is traveling with President Obama at the G8 summit in France, stated that his capture underscores that, “justice will come to those who carry out these types of crimes against humanity, that the international community will be unrelenting in the pursuit of that justice.”