Mass rape, torture and a bloodlust that defies belief

ONE of the most chilling scenes recorded during the collapse of Yugoslavia was that of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic patting the cheek of a blond Bosnian Muslim boy at the gates of the ‘safe area’ that had been created around the old silver town of Srebrenica. It appeared to be the avuncular gesture of a visiting dignitary among his own people.

‘How old are you?’ the general asked. ‘Twelve,’ replied the boy. ‘Please be patient,’ said Mladic, now addressing the anxious crowd beyond his new young friend. ‘Anyone who wants to stay can stay. Anyone who wants to leave can go.’

But his words were not really directed at the tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims trapped in and around the United Nations compound in Srebrenica by his victorious Serb forces. They were supposed to send a message to the watching world, via TV cameras, that there was nothing to worry about. That the Serbs would show mercy to their enemies in defeat.

But his message could not have been more cynical – or more dishonest. For Mladic knew the film crews would soon be far away and would not witness the horrors set to unfold.

The date was July 12, 1995. And the circumstances for the worst war crime to take place on European soil since World War II had been set in place.

The general might have said to that blond boy and his comrades they could stay or leave as they wished.

But the truth was that if you were a Bosnian Muslim male aged between 12 and 77 in Srebrenica that summer, you would either be rounded up and slaughtered, or hunted through the forests and mountains like an animal. The result was almost always the same.

The massacre in which some 8,000 died was the most infamous episode of an infamous war, and one of the most shameful hours in their history for the United Nations and Nato.

The failure to act to stop the mass killings later brought down the government of the Netherlands when it became clear Dutch soldiers had stood by while the slaughter took place.

To understand Ratko Mladic’s role in the war, it’s important to understand the bitter historical enmities at play in that corner of the Balkans.

The conflict blighted Bosnia Herzegovina, which became a republic of Yugoslavia after World War II.

Within Bosnia there were three restive ethnic groupings. In a 1991 census, Muslims made up more than two-fifths of the population, while Serbs composed slightly less than a third, and Croats one-sixth.

AROUND that time, Yugoslavia was being pulled apart, with the then-European Community recognising the independence of its former republics Croatia and Slovenia at the end of 1991. But the fate of Bosnia Herzegovina was far more complicated – and bloody.

In May 1992, Ratko Mladic’s home territory of Bosnia Herzegovina also declared independence from Yugoslavia. At that point, the president of the neighbouring republic of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, sought to form a new ‘Greater Serbia’, in alliance with the Bosnian Serbs.

The new Bosnian Serb leader was Milosevic’s protege, Radovan Karadzic. These were the two men who unleashed Ratko Mladic on their enemies.

Atrocities were committed by all sides in the former Yugoslavia. Croats slaughtered Serbs and Muslims, and Muslims slaughtered Croats and Serbs. But one side undoubtedly possessed the greatest firepower. If Milosevic were the figurehead and financier of attempts to carve a Greater Serbia from the disintegrating Yugoslav federation, Mladic was the sharpest of the cutting tools for that job. Often he was considered, or at least portrayed by his own masters, as being out of control. But what he did undoubtedly suited their own purposes.

Mladic was born in the Herzegovina region during World War II, when the area was caught up in the Nazis’ conquest of Europe. His father fought with Communist partisans and was killed on Ratko’s third birthday in an attack on a village held by the Croatian nationalist forces allied with Germany.

Mladic joined the Yugoslav army in the Sixties. By the time Yugoslavia began to fall apart in 1991, he had reached general rank. He later became commander of the Bosnian Serb forces sent to fight the Croats — whose forebears had dispatched his father.

Fired by bloodlust and hellbent on revenge, the bull-necked Mladic set about his task with zeal. Genocide would follow. One of the earliest examples of atrocities committed by men under his command were the ‘rape houses’ in and around the Bosnian town of Foca. They were established in April 1992 and Bosnian Muslim women were held there to be tortured and gang-raped by passing Serb units.

But it is for Srebrenica that Mladic will be remembered most. It had become a Bosnian Muslim enclave near the border with Serbia, and in April 1993 was declared a ‘safe area’ under UN Security Council Resolution 819.

A Dutch battalion was based there to enforce this resolution. But as 1995 progressed, a noose was slowly drawn around the area by Mladic’s forces. The Dutch ran short on supplies and numbers, not to mention the will or ability to defend the territory. Karadzic wanted the situation to become ‘unbearable’ for those trapped inside. Mladic set about making it happen.

By July, death by starvation was being reported. On July 6, the Serb offensive began and Dutch outposts were soon abandoned or surrendered without a fight. Thousands of terrified Muslim refugees poured into Srebrenica.

A Dutch call for Nato air strikes to repel the Serb forces met with a very limited response in the face of Serb threats to kill UN hostages and launch an all-out bombardment. By July 11, the Serbs had control of the town, and Mladic was filmed drinking a toast with the Dutch UN commander as they negotiated the inhabitants’ future.

On TV, Karadzic promised: ‘Our army

is very, very responsible. Civilians [in Srebrenica] are secure.’ Yet before the 370 Dutch troops had even left, the sporadic murder and rape of the Muslim refugees by Mladic’s men began.

The Serb forces provided buses for women and children to leave for Muslim-held areas, but a number were brutally abused.

One witness, seamstress Kada Hotic, who lost her husband and son, recalled: ‘There was a young woman with a baby on the way to the bus. The baby cried and a Serbian soldier told her… to make sure the baby was quiet. Then… he took the child from the mother and cut its throat.’

She said another soldier had stamped on a newborn baby. Muslim males of fighting age and sometimes much younger were separated from their families. There was a different plan for them. Many anticipated what was coming and there were suicides.

Several thousand men, some of them fighters, attempted a breakout on foot across mountainous terrain to Muslim-held territory some 60km away (this in the full heat of the Balkan summer).

These columns were ambushed, shelled and harried by Mladic’s forces. Many gave up and were captured, promised safety but doomed to the fate of those who had remained behind. The mass executions began around July 13.

Eyewitnesses claimed Mladic personally viewed large groups of prisoners, and was present at execution sites.

Hundreds were mown down with machine-guns at open-air sites and in factories or warehouses. Buildings and roads swam with blood. Torture and mutilation took place. The killing went on for days. Bulldozers were used to cover the bodies with earth. By the end Srebrenica had been ‘cleansed’.

But the bloodshed was not over yet. At the end of August, Mladic’s artillery-men shelled a marketplace in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, killing or wounding more than 100 civilians.

This at last sparked a sustained Nato air campaign which, along with a Muslim-Croat ground offensive, drove the Serbs to the negotiating table in November 1995, at Dayton, Ohio, in the US.

That month, Karadzic and his Mladic were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for their part in war crimes against the population of Srebrenica.

Mladic had been indicted on other charges earlier that year. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but little happened. Mladic, one of the world’s most wanted men, was even seen skiing on the old Olympic slopes above Sarajevo.

The hunt was stepped up. Nato carried out commando raids to seize other suspects. But Mladic, even with a multi-million bounty on his head, had gone to ground, backed by Serb nationalists who saw, and still see, him as a hero.

It was not until July 2011, after 16 years on the run, that Mladic was finally arrested. The catalyst was a leaked report which said that Serbia was refusing to co-operate with the manhunt.

As a result, the EU was expected to reject Serbia’s application for membership because it did not share a commitment to human rights. So it was that giving up Mladic became the price of Serbia’s membership negotiations.

Within days, Serbian special forces detained Mladic in northern Serbia. Now, six years on, after his attempts to delay the legal process, his sentencing to life in jail surely marks the last significant act of a dismal tragedy. More than 6,000 victims of Srebrenica have been buried, many unidentified. Hundreds remain missing. For them Ratko Mladic’s conviction comes far too late.