‘Butcher of Srebrenica’ has no regrets
BELGRADE: The Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic – sentenced to life in prison for the worst atrocity in Europe since the Holocaust – showed no regret during his marathon trial for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
Born in Bosnia, an ethnic melting pot once showcased as an example of “brotherhood and unity” in Yugoslavia, Mladic – now 75 – was an anonymous army officer until the violent breakup of the federation in 1991. A year later, he was appointed the overall commander of Bosnian Serb forces.
He carried out a swift, merciless campaign against the then far weaker Bosniak and Croat forces, grabbing swathes of land for the Serbs. At one point, the Serbs, who virtually inherited the Yugoslav army in Bosnia, controlled three-quarters of the country.
His forces also executed a campaign of terror against Bosniaks and Croats wherever possible. The ICTY judgment gave gruesome details of murder, beatings, rape and other atrocities, some of which he ordered or witnessed personally.
During the trial, Mladic showed no remorse; on the contrary, despite being frail and occasionally not fully coherent, he attempted to radiate the same arrogance which showed during the 1992 to 1995 war.
“I want my enemies, and there are many, to drop dead because I am still alive,” he said as the trial opened 5-and-a-half years ago.
During the Bosnian war Mladic enjoyed showing off his might for cameras, be it by lifting weights or by strutting among terrified Bosniak prisoners – just before his troops killed them.
“Good evening I am General Mladic,” he was filmed saying to terrified women and children in a bus as they waited to be expelled from their homes in Srebrenica in July 1995.
Even as he spoke, his soldiers were rounding up able-bodied males – the youngest was 14 – and setting up plans for their execution. A US diplomat then involved in the region, Christopher Hill, described Mladic as brutal, arrogant and vain.
He recounted how during talks called in 1995 in a bid to ease the siege of Sarajevo, the general slaughtered a pig with the apparent intention of demonstrating his ruthlessness.
When the war ended a few months after Srebrenica, Mladic then already under an ICTY indictment, but also under protection of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade – remained on the same track.
There were reports of him confronting armed British commandos while skiing with his bodyguards in the mountains above Sarajevo and attending a football match in Belgrade.
After Milosevic fell in 2000 and pressure from the west began to grow on Serbia to hand over ICTY indictees, most of all Mladic, he went underground and remained on the run until May 26, 2011.
He was arrested in a relative’s home in Lazarevo, in northern Serbia.
The arrest, his extradition and the start of the trial a year later attracted huge attention in Serbia and the region.
In spite of the detailed, well-documented accusations shown daily on TV channels, which aired the proceedings live, Mladic retained the status of the nation’s hero defender, a role he was given by Milosevic’s media during the Yugoslav wars.
The trial of Mladic and other Serbs at the ICTY, is seen by critics as an instrument to continue pressuring the Russia-friendly nation.
For the other side in the Yugoslav wars, however, Mladic will always be a mass-murderer nicknamed “the butcher of Srebrenica”.