Butcher of Bosnia guilty of genocide

Mladic, 75, known as the Butcher of Bosnia, was found guilty by the UN’s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal of leading forces responsible for crimes including the worst atrocities of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war – the three-year siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern enclave of Srebrenica, which was Europe’s worst mass killing since the Second World War.

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“The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to humankind,” Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said when reading out the court’s judgment.

Mladic’s lawyers said they planned to appeal.

The convictions were hailed as a victory for international justice by the court’s prosecutor and rights groups.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein called Mladic “the epitome of evil” and described the prosecution as “the epitome of what international justice is all about.”

The verdict, he added, should serve as a warning to other perpetrators of atrocities “that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take.

“They will be held accountable.”

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A three-judge panel at the court convicted Mladic of 10 out of 11 counts in a dramatic climax to a groundbreaking effort to seek justice for the wars in the former multi-ethnic federation.

Presiding Judge Orie read key parts of the judgment after ordering Mladic out of the courtroom for the final verdict over an angry outburst.

Survivors known as the Mothers of Srebrenica, clapped when the convictions were read out.

Mladic’s son Darko dismissed the convictions, saying: “I’m not surprised. The court was totally biased from the start.”

The judgment marks the end of the final trial at the tribunal, which was set up in 1993, while fierce fighting was still raging in Bosnia. The court will close its doors by the end of the year.

Emotions ran high outside the courtroom, with a small skirmish reflecting lingering tensions between Serbs and Bosniaks.

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Despite ailing health, Mladic looked relaxed, greeting lawyers, crossing himself and giving a thumbs-up to photographers. He nodded regularly as Judge Orie read out descriptions of atrocities by Bosnian Serb forces, one by one.

But midway through the hearing Mladic’s lawyer, Dragan Ivetic, asked for a delay because the general was suffering high blood pressure.

The judge refused, and Mladic burst out with criticism and was manhandled out of the room by guards to watch the rest of the hearing in a separate room via a video link.

“I was not impressed,” Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said. “When he started speaking, it was not about his health but much more trying to insult the judges.”

Judge Orie said the court confirmed that “genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and the inhuman act of forcible transfer were committed in or around Srebrenica” in 1995.

Previous judgments have said it was genocide. However, Judge Orie said the court is not convinced of genocidal intent in six other municipalities, in line with previous judgments.

Mr Brammertz said he would study the lengthy written judgment before deciding whether to appeal against the single acquittal.

The conflict in the former Yugoslavia erupted after the country’s break-up in the early 1990s, with the worst crimes taking place in Bosnia. More than 100,000 people died and millions lost their homes before a peace agreement was signed in 1995. Mladic went into hiding for around 10 years before his arrest in Serbia in May 2011.

Analysis: Courage needed to shine a light on a dark history

By Alex Kocic 

THE guilty verdict and life sentence for Ratko Mladic marks a symbolic end-point for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as it is about to be shut down for good.

The verdict against Mladic is meant to bring to a close, at least in judicial terms, the darkest chapter in the post-Second World War history of Europe.

Justice has been served, but will it lead to reconciliation in the region? When the tribunal in the Hague was set up, the idea was the responsibility for the crimes perpetrated in the former Yugoslavia would be attributed to individuals, not whole ethnic groups.

But governments in Serbia, and also Croatia and Kosovo, have never truly embraced it. Serbs see it as a punishment against them, or at best a necessary evil on Serbia’s road to EU membership.

The reason neither Belgrade nor Zagreb has truly embraced the concept of individual responsibility is because the evidence emerging from the trials in the Hague over the years clearly showed that the war crimes in the former Yugoslavia were systematically organised, planned and ordered from the very top.

Denial of crimes committed by the Serbs is still dominant in the political discourse in Serbia and the word genocide is to be avoided at all times.

But this policy of denial should not only be viewed through the prism of everyday, short-term politics.

A sense of victimhood is ingrained in the collective Serbian psyche. Historically Serbs have seen themselves as self-righteous victims of calculating superpowers or scheming neighbours.

Mladic said many times the conflict in Bosnia was a way of righting the historical wrongs and injustices against the Serbs.

That strand of thinking has always been strong in Serbia, but Mladic had the weapons to put it into military action.

For today’s verdict to act as a catalyst for change in attitudes, Serbia will have to elect leaders not afraid to admit that terrible crimes were committed by Serbs; leaders who will be courageous enough to start a genuine process of public dialogue and education about the recent history.

Alex Kocic is a journalism lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University who spent years covering the Bosnia War.