The International Criminal Court in The Hague upholds the life sentence of Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of the Balkans”

International judges delivered their verdict on Tuesday on the appeal of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995.

He was convicted of 10 of the 11 charges against him and was only acquitted of the crime of genocide in a few Bosnian municipalities. His entire appeal was dismissed. He has already spent a decade in prison in The Hague and is now locked up for the rest of his life, after the court upheld the decision on appeal.

Nicknamed the “Butcher of the Balkans”, the former general was convicted at first instance in 2017 for his role in the Srebrenica massacre, the worst in Europe since World War II, which international justice has qualified as an act of genocide.

Mladic was arrested in 2011 after 16 years on the run and is still being held in The Hague. The one who was known as an imposing man is currently an old man in his eighties who suffers from health problems, according to his lawyers.

More than a quarter of a century after the conflict, the former general retains an aura of heroes among his people, even though its name is associated with war crimes in Bosnia, the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 Muslim men and adolescents were killed by Bosnian Serb forces.

International Court Prosecutor Serge Brammertz, a Belgian national, said he remained “Cautiously optimistic” about the decision. “I cannot imagine any other verdict than the confirmation” of at least one of the previous convictions, he noted.

Despite the pandemic, relatives of the victims, such as Munira Subasic, president of an association of “mothers of Srebrenica”, will be present in The Hague to see the “executioner” in the eyes.

The verdict was released at 3:00 p.m. (1:00 p.m. GMT) and released online 30 minutes apart, by the Mechanism for International Criminal Courts, which succeeded the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), after its closure in 2017.

BRUTAL TRIO

Mladic, was the military face of a brutal trio politically led by former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, protagonists of the Bosnian War, who kills around 100,000 and displaces 2.2 million.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006 in a cell in The Hague before the conclusion of his trial, while Karadzic is serving a life sentence for the Srebrenica genocide.

Mladic was convicted of genocide for having personally monitored the mascare in the Srebrenica enclave, as part of a campaign to expel Muslims.

Footage from the time shows him handing candy to children before they and the women of Srebrenica were evacuated from the site by bus, while the men are executed in a forest.

He was also found guilty of orchestrating a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” to expel Muslims and Bosnians, with a view to creating a Greater Serbia after the dissolution of then Yugoslavia.

The trial judgment was appealed by both the defense and the prosecution, which attributes crimes of genocide to Mladic in other municipalities beyond Srebrenica.

The representation of the former general, for its part, demands his acquittal of the charges of genocide and defends that there is no link between his client and the massacre of 1995.

His lawyers will be particularly attentive to the conclusions of the president of the tribunal Prisca Nyambe, originally from Zambia, who issued a dissenting opinion in 2012 in the judgment against Zdravko Tolimir, Mladic’s right-hand man.

With you, trust is rare.

“You just have to be Serbian to be sentenced in The Hague,” Vojin Pavlovic, president of a nationalist association which organized a tribute to Mladic yesterday, told AFP.

In the central square of Bratunac, thirty miles from Srebrenica, they screened a film on the former Serbian general, which brought together about fifty people.

“His job is great and should never be forgotten,” Pavlovic said.

“Executioner” for some, “hero” for others, the verdict on Mladic will not put an end to the divisions in the Balkans, warned prosecutor Brammertz, but it will only be “the end of a chapter”.

GENOCIDE AND WAR CRIMES

International judges They found him guilty of ten counts: of the Srebrenica genocide, where at least 8,000 Muslims were killed and thousands more were looted and raped, as well as four war crimes and five crimes against humanity.

The defense appealed the verdict on health grounds of the 78-year-old detainee known as “the Butcher of the Balkans”, while the prosecutor’s office appealed for his conviction on a second count of genocide.

BOSNIA AWAITS GREATER CONDEMNATION

“The least one can expect from the final decision is the confirmation of the current one, of life imprisonment,” said Marko Attila Hoare, British historian, author of several books on Bosnia and professor at the university. private Sarajevo School of Science and Technology. EFE in the Bosnian capital.

Hoare believes that the acquittal of the other charges of genocide should be quashed since, he asserts, this is what happened in the western town of Prijedor, and in five other Bosnian towns: Foca, Kotor-Varos, Sanski Most, Kljuc and Vlasenica.

“It would be correcting the deception (…) that a genocide has been committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the summer of 1995, when in reality it had already taken place in the country since 1992”, he said. declared.

Already that year, more than 3,000 Muslims and Croats, including 102 children, were killed or disappeared in Prijedor, and 50,000 people were expelled.

30,000 others were detained and ill-treated in three concentration camps near the city. Bosnian Serb authorities in Prijedor had ordered the non-Serb population to mark their homes with white cloth and wear a white armband as proof of loyalty.

Also the Bosnian Satko Mujagic, a former prisoner of war and now a peace activist, wants the court in The Hague to recognize that these crimes were aimed at the annihilation of an entire people.

“Although it is difficult for (Mladic) to be convicted, it is important that the genocide in Prijedor and other municipalities be proven,” Mujagic said.

(with AFP and EFE information)

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