Who is Ratko Mladic, the general symbol of the atrocities of the war in Bosnia

Ratko Mladic was considered a hero of the Serbian people but came to be described as “the epitome of evil” for crimes committed by his forces during the war in Bosnia, from the headquarters of Sarajevo to the massacre of Srebrenica.

This Tuesday, in The Hague, the International justice rejected the former general’s appeal and upheld his life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The acts committed during the Bosnian war, which left 100,000 deaths between 1992 and 1995, are “among the most atrocious that humanity has known”, according to the trial verdict.

Among these is the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and adolescents in Srebrenica, which, according to international justice, constitutes a genocide and the worst massacre committed on European soil since World War II.

The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein described the former general as “the epitome of evil”.

Arrested in 2011 after 16 years on the run, the portly and arrogant soldier became, at nearly 80 years old, an old patient.

But, for part of the Serbian community, which considers that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based in The Hague, is not impartial, the ex-soldier only defended the cause of the “Serbian people”.

In Kalinovik, where he was born, in southeastern Bosnia, a giant fresco in his honor proclaims that we walk on “the city of the hero”.

Borders “drawn in blood”

“I am General Mladic. I defended my country and my people ”, launched during his first court appearance in The Hague.

The soldier, an angry and brutal man for some, cheerful and extravagant for others, once said that “The borders had always been drawn with blood and the States, delimited by tombs.

He is considered the third architect of the ethnic cleansing in the conflict which divided Bosnia in the manner of communal divisions.

From Belgrade, President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in prison aged 64 in 2006, ignited the Balkans with his speeches on the Greater Serbia, while addressing the international community.

In Pale, the de facto capital of the Bosnian Serbs, the psychiatrist Radovan Karadzic, 72, sentenced in 2016 to 40 years in prison, spat his fanatic propaganda.

Mladic it was his armed arm, the only one of the trio born in Bosnia, March 12, 1943 according to him, although international justice has fixed the year of his birth in 1942.

Orphan of a partisan father who died at the hands of pro-Nazi Ustasha Croats, he knew very early on that he wanted to be a soldier and with At 22, he became one of the youngest officers in the Yugoslav army.

At the start of the war, after fighting the Croats, he was transferred to Sarajevo, where He led the nearly four-year siege that devastated the city.

More than 10,000 inhabitants, including 1,500 children, died victims of the snipers and artillery fire from the hills controlled by Mladic’s troops around town.

Paternal attitude

However, many Bosnian Serbs downplay or even deny the abuses committed. His supporters continue to present him as a peasant soldier in love with his land, respectful of the codes of honor of war, whose only objectives were a united Yugoslavia and the protection of “his” people against those he called the “Turks. , Muslim Bosnians.

In 1994, his daughter Ana, a medical student, committed suicide. According to some witnesses, Mladic became more brutal after his death, which occurred a year before Srebrenica.

In footage recorded in Srebrenica, the general appears speaking with civilians, women and the elderly, after his troops conquered the Muslim enclave in July 1995. “Do not be afraid. Slowly, slowly, let the women and children come first”, he tells them. We even see him pat a little Bosnian on the cheek, with a fatherly attitude.

In another recording, Mladic celebrates “revenge against the Turks”.

Following the Dayton Accords, which ended the war, Mladic remained in Bosnia, safe in his refuge in Han Pijesak, a base half-buried in a pine forest in the east of the country.

Then he moved to Belgrade, protected by the army. There, although officially he was wanted, he did not need to hide. He pruns roses, goes to the bakery, dines in restaurants and attends football games.

But, with the fall of the Milosevic regime in 2000, went into hiding. The arrests weakened their networks, and for Serbia aspiring to join the European Union, the general became a problem.

On May 26, 2011, the police arrested him at the home of one of his cousins ​​in the town of Lazarevo. Before being transferred to The Hague, he asked to visit his daughter’s grave.

Rusmir Smajilhodzic for AFP

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