Profile: Stojan Zupljanin

Zupljanin was a regional security chief during the war

After 13 years as a fugitive, Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Stojan Zupljanin has finally been arrested near the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

He is alleged to have played a central role in the destruction of the Bosnian Muslim and Croat communities in the 1992-95 Bosnian war in a western area of the country known as Bosanska Krajina.

As a regional security chief, he oversaw the operation of prison camps where thousands were allegedly held in horrific conditions and many were tortured and murdered.

Born in 1951, in Maslovare, a village in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mr Zupljanin graduated from law school in Sarajevo.

He became chief of the Department for the Prevention of General Crime in the city of Banja Luka in 1985.

From 1991 he was in command of the regional Security Services Centre (CSB) in Banja Luka, where he had operational control over police forces in Bosanska Krajina.

In the midst of the war in 1994, he became internal affairs adviser to the Bosnian Serb president.

In 2001 he was publicly indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on 12 counts, including torture and crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention.

He disappeared after his indictment and is believed to have spent time in Russia in 2006.

In October 2005, his home was raided by local police and EU peacekeepers, but they failed to find him.

Bosnia froze Mr Zupljanin's assets in January 2007, as well as those of three other remaining fugitives - Gen Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and Goran Hadzic.

In December 2007 Mr Zupljanin's family publicly called on him to "sacrifice" himself and surrender, to spare them embarrassment and financial ruin.

Officials said Mr Zupljanin foiled a previous attempt to arrest him in the southern Serbian city of Nis two months ago. A diary was reportedly found at the premises, which gave investigators an insight into his whereabouts.