The Hague confirmed life imprisonment for the “butcher of …

The International Criminal Court in The Hague upholds the initial verdict of life imprisonment against former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995. Nicknamed the “butcher of the Balkans”, the former general had appealed the 2017 first-instance conviction of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for, among other crimes, his role in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, the worst in Europe since World War II.

The verdict ends legal proceedings against Mladic, as there is no appeal to the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MTPI) against a second instance conviction. the to exclude a soldier was present in court and, unlike on other occasions, he didn’t laugh at the judges.

Confirmation of conviction celebrated by US President Joe biden, who in a statement thanked the UN tribunals for more than two decades of “tireless work” and noted that “Justice and reconciliation are the basis of peace and stability in the future”. In addition, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle bachelet, pointed out that verdict “underlines the determination of international justice to be held to account however long it takes”.

A group of mothers of the 8,000 Muslim men and adolescents killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the town of Srebrenica in 1995 approached The Hague to await the decision. “It is a historic day not only for us mothers, but also for the whole of the Balkans, Europe and the world”, declared Munira Subasic, president of one of the associations which brings together the mothers of Srebrenica. For this woman Mladic “he’s a monster who hasn’t regretted what he did even 26 years later”.

Arrested in 2011 after 16 years on the run and in detention in The Hague since, the former general retains the aura of heroes among the Bosnian Serbs, although his name is associated with Srebrenica, the siege of Sarajevo and other crimes in Bosnia. Mladic was the military face of a brutal trio politically led by former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and former political leader Radovan Karadzic.

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 personally monitoring the massacre in the Srebrenica enclave and for 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.

Footage from the time shows him handing candy to children before they and the women of Srebrenica were evacuated from the scene by buses, while the men were executed in a forest. He argued that he had been drawn into the Bosnian War, which caused around 100,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced.

At the appeal hearing, In August 2020, Mladic claimed the tribunal was an “offshoot of the Western powers” and claimed to be still “a target of the NATO alliance”., the military alliance with which the United States and the European powers bombed Serbia and the region during this conflict in an episode which however never reached international courts.