Justice at last

However long delayed, it’s still justice

RATKO MLADIC, the Serbian general-cum-warlord, managed to escape justice for more than two decades after presiding over the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War. But at last an international criminal tribunal has caught up with him. He is to serve the rest of his 74-year-old life in prison. It was a just if long overdue sentence, for enough blood has already been shed in what used to be Yugoslavia, and letting him live caged like the killer he is represents no threat to anyone. The court wisely chose life rather than risk making him a martyr to the remaining diehards who followed him, adding to the trail of blood.

Disagreeing about so many things, the usual human-rights organizations seemed to come together this time to condemn a mass killer. Speaking for Physicians for Human Rights, which exhumed the remains of the victims in mass graves that dotted what used to be Yugoslavia, spokewoman Susannah Sirkin declared: “After more than two decades, today’s verdict offers a measure of justice for all those who suffered from Mladic’s unconscionable crimes.” His trial took more than four years and featured testimony from almost 600 witnesses. Everyone had a chance to say their piece, including the still enraged killer.

It is important to preserve every line of testimony, every scrap of evidence. For those who forget history, as Santayana told us, are condemned to repeat it. So save the record left by both saints and sinners and those who just looked on doing nothing. For the mills of justice still grind slow but exceedingly fine.

(Great and small, rich and poor, old and young made the news over the Thanksgiving holiday. In a one-sentence paragraph in the daily In the News column on the front page of Arkansas’ Newspaper, it was recorded that Elmer Alvarez, a homeless man in Connecticut who found a $10,000 check and returned it just because he wanted to do “the right thing,” got shelter and a job interview courtesy of the real-estate agent who’d lost it. There is justice in the world on every scale even though one might have to search high and low. And wait patiently for it. But have faith: it will come in its own due season.)

It isn’t easy to choose the most base of Ratko Mladic’s war crimes, there were so many. His vigilante militia besieged the storied Bosnian capital of Sarajevo for four years, picking off those innocents who dared to go outside into the chaos for necessities. Even as Ratko Mladic shouted “Burn their brains!” above the tumult. He seems to have thought of himself as seeking justice for the centuries. The city was occupied by the Turks, though what he called justice was only separate but equal vengeance. So he in turn persecuted Croats and Muslims indiscriminately in order to set up “ethnically clean” enclaves.

And so it went as each of Sarajevo’s conquerors acted as if vengeance was theirs alone. To quote the presiding judge, Alphons Orie, in these proceedings: “Those who tried to defend their homes were met with ruthless force. Mass executions occurred, and some victims succumbed after being beaten. Many of the perpetrators who had captured Bosnian Muslims showed little or no respect for human life of dignity.”

Verdict rendered, case closed—let’s hope. Ratko Mladic hid from justice from 1997 until he was finally tracked down by Serbian police who discovered him hiding in a village near the Romanian border, his plans to get away with his crimes foiled at last. Sic semper tyrannis. So may it always be with tyrants—though Ratko Mladic was only an aspiring one at the end. For the long arm of justice had finally caught up with him, and put an end to his numerous depredations.

Let him live as testimony to the old truth that terror and worse won’t be tolerated so long as reason—not to mention hope, faith and charity—are left free to combat evil.