Ratko Mladic Captured

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Mladic is an alleged war criminal responsible for the death of more than 8000 innocents, many of them children.

He has been captured, and will face trial.

Why didn't they just shoot him point-blank in the head, like a proper freedom-loving democracy?


'Serbian god' faces trial for wartime atrocities
Dusan Stojanovic, Paul Bibby
May 27, 2011


Serbia says it has arrested Serbian wartime general Ratko Mladic, who has been on the run for years from international genocide charges.

BELGRADE: General Ratko Mladic's ruthlessness was legendary: ''Burn their brains!'' he once bellowed as his men pounded Sarajevo with artillery fire.

So was his arrogance: he nicknamed himself God and kept goats he was said to have named after Western leaders he despised.

Mladic, the wartime Bosnian Serb military chief wanted for genocide for Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II, was the No. 1 co-fugitive on the United Nations war crimes tribunal, together with his partner in crime Radovan Karadzic.

Mladic had eluded capture since he was indicted by the tribunal in 1995.

Shortly after 1pm in Belgrade yesterday, Serbia's President announced that the 69-year-old was in custody.

Mladic was known for personally leading his troops in the 1995 Serb onslaught against the enclave of Srebrenica. Under nominal UN protection, 8000 Muslim men and boys were rounded up and massacred.

Atrocity ... a video still showing emaciated prisoners at Trnopolje camp in north-west Serb-held Bosnia in the summer of 1992. The video was submitted as evidence during the war crimes trial of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. Photo: REUTERS

Just hours before the massacre, Mladic handed out lollies to Muslim children assembled in the town's square and assured them all would be fine - even patting one child on the head.

He also had command responsibility of the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995 - the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.

Serb forces of the Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav People's Army besieged Sarajevo with a siege force of 18,000. It is estimated that nearly 10,000 people were killed or went missing.

Born March 12, 1942, in the south-eastern Bosnian village of Bozinovci, Mladic graduated from Belgrade's prestigious military academy and joined the Yugoslav Communists in 1965.

He rose steadily through military ranks, making general before the country's break-up in 1991.

Appointed in 1992 by Karadzic, Mladic led the Bosnian Serb army until the Dayton accords brought peace to Bosnia in 1995.

Mladic commanded fierce devotion - many Bosnian Serb soldiers pledged to follow him to the death - and adoration bordering on the pathological.

Obsessed with his nation's history, Mladic saw Bosnia's war - which killed more than 100,000 people and displaced another 1.8 million - as a chance for revenge against 500 years of Turkish-Ottoman occupation of Serbia. He viewed Bosnian Muslims as Turks and called them that as an insult. ''When I give you guarantees, it's as if they are given by God,'' he told soldiers.

Once, asking air traffic control to clear his helicopter to land, he declared: ''Here speaks Ratko Mladic - the Serbian god.''

His short temper only added to his popularity among Bosnian Serbs, who appeared to like him all the more when he reportedly fell out with Karadzic in 1994. During the shelling of Sarajevo, Mladic was said to have commanded: ''Scorch and destroy!'' He denied giving such an order.

The US government offered $5 million for information leading to Mladic's arrest or conviction in any country.

Evading arrest, Mladic began his fugitive years in Han Pijesak, a military compound in eastern Bosnia built for the late Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito and designed to withstand a nuclear attack.

With his wife, Bosa, Mladic settled down to imposed domesticity, passing the time caring for bees and goats.

Footage released in 2009 showed Mladic dancing at a family gathering and frolicking in the snow. It is unclear when the footage was taken, but the former general seemed unrestricted and unconcerned about the price on his head.

Surrounded by security guards, he occasionally ventured out of the dence pine forest to mark events such the anniversary of the Bosnian Serb army.

with AP and Paul Bibby



Read more: www.theage.com.au/world/serbian-god-faces-trial-for-wartime-atrocities-20110526-1f6q3.html#ixzz1NYf22PMD

[oskar]

And no one had to invade Bora Bora to catch him.

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There are many parallels between Mladic and Osama's cases (although Mladic is charged with killing far more victims), but the differences in the way they were handled could not be more stark. It is the difference between sending in the police, with the objective of an arrest, versus sending in trained assassins whose job is to kill. It is real justice, not revenge-seeking.

The reason I am harping on this is the number of American voices defending their actions over bin Laden with comments like "What else could have been done?". Well, here is your answer, in the clearest possible terms.

I particularly noted this comment:

''We believe that it can have a positive impact on reconciliation in the region,'' he said.

That is something that the extra-judicial execution of bin Laden has no prospect of achieving.


Justice comes knocking for Mladic, closing a bloody chapter for Balkans
Paola Totaro
May 28, 2011

IT WAS a rather banal end to a 16-year search: ''Well done, I'm the person you are looking for.''

So said Ratko Mladic, Europe's most-wanted war criminal, when police arrived at the door of a nondescript, apricot-coloured house in the north Serbian village of Lazarevo.

''I spoke to the Minister of the Interior yesterday … they were pretty much his words when they found him,'' British author of the The Serbs, Tim Judah, said from Belgrade yesterday.

''My impression is the authorities didn't specifically know he was there … that they got a tip and searched family homes but they really just stumbled on him.

''There's been much talk here that the arrest was timed with the visit of Baroness Cathy Ashton [the EU's Foreign Affairs and Security Policy representative] but I really don't think so.''

The ''Butcher of Bosnia'' spent 16 years on the run, at times living brazenly and defiantly, and protected by his own; at others, in a growing paranoia best illustrated by the cache of guns found at his wife's house.

But at 5.30am on Thursday, justice came knocking. Like Osama bin Laden, Mladic, the ferocious Serb general, accused of the massacre of nearly 8000 Muslim men and boys, was found holed up inside a house owned by family - and in the bosom of a community he knew.

His cousin's modest villa, surrounded by a wall and gates on leafy Via Vuk Karadzic, was one of three family houses searched by police. On Wednesday night, Mladic went to bed armed with two pistols. The following morning, he chose to go quietly. Serb security officers said he was compliant.

''If he passed you by with glasses and a cap, you would not recognise him, but when you see the photos it's clear that it's him,'' said Rasim Ljajic, head of the National Council for Cooperation with The Hague war crimes tribunal.

Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed the capture to the world, saying it would allow the closure of a ''very hard chapter in Serbian history'' and offering proof of his state's adherence to the ''rule of law'' when tracking down alleged war criminals.

Eight hours later, looking thin and frail, Mladic, 69, shuffled under guard into a Belgrade courtroom. The hearing was cut short due to his poor health. Accompanying guards were overheard respectfully calling him ''general''.

Bob Stewart, a former United Nations commander in Bosnia and now a British Conservative MP, said Serbian authorities had long known Mladic's whereabouts.

''I'm absolutely delighted … they have known where he was for a long time and eventually they've got down to doing it,'' he said. ''Elements of the Serb security services will have known exactly where he was.''

International lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said Mladic's transfer to The Hague, to be reunited with his political master, former Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, would be ''smart quick''.

''Serbia's future in the European Union depends on getting him there with Karadzic pronto,'' he said.

Mladic may have chosen not to resist his captors but as soon as news of his arrest spread locally, a phalanx of angry neighbours and villagers surrounded the house, defensively waving Serbian national flags and singing patriotic songs.

Locals interviewed by news outlet Beta insisted Mladic had never before been seen in their village. Another neighbour, talking to Italy's La Repubblica, defiantly stated that even if he had seen Mladic, he would never have alerted authorities.

Over the years, there have been reports that Mladic was allowed to roam free, and was seen in an expensive Belgrade restaurant one night, at a military post on another, even at a local racecourse. In Lazarevo, police said Mladic had been living under the name Milorad Komadic.

Suddenly, the years of rumoured protection, of mysterious Mladic sightings and unexplained appearances - followed by frustratingly sudden cold trails - have appeared in political context.

It seems extraordinary to foreign eyes that a commander widely known and feared as a revenge-driven psychopath could continue to live out his life cocooned by friends and military supporters. The onslaught of the Bosnian Serbs' guns and military killed more than 12,000 people over three years in the siege of Sarajevo alone.

In Srebrenica, an enclave of resistance in the east, the slaughter of the 8000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995, allegedly on the orders of Mladic, unfolded over just four days. It required a logistical operation, extraordinary levels of planning and has been described as the worst massacre in Europe since the Nazi era.

For the thousands of war survivors and relatives of those slain, Mladic's arrest may offer a similar echo of symbolic relief, if not peace, as that of bin Laden for America. But the enormity of what happened in front of Western eyes is important to remember in cultural context too. In a nation of just 4 million people, 110,000 lost their lives and more than 2.2 million were displaced in the savage campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said victims had endured unimaginable horrors and redress for their suffering was long overdue.

''We believe that it can have a positive impact on reconciliation in the region,'' he said.

The head of a victims' group in Bosnia, Munira Subasic, said simply: ''I am sorry for all the victims who are dead and cannot see this day.''

A statement from 6000 women who lost relatives in the massacre, described May 26, 2011, as ''an important moment for the mothers of Srebrenica''.

Gaille Mackinnon, an Australian-born forensic anthropologist based in Britain, was part of the forensic team of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for three seasons, between 1998 and 2000.

She and her colleagues saw firsthand the horror at Srebrenica as they painstakingly collated evidence to return loved ones to devastated families and build a case against those who ordered the killings.

''The thing is that it doesn't take very much for the surface to be scratched and for the experiences to reappear in the consciousness just as viscerally and as forcefully as they were experienced,'' she said. ''All those who have in some way been involved will now relive it through the images that will be broadcast on the news.

''[For me, it was] working late in the mortuary on All Hallow's Eve, with remains laid out on examination tables while outside families would gather around the graves of both the long and the more recently dead and spend the night with their little red glass bowls and tea lights; the 'Dutchbat' [Dutch battalion] HQ at Potocari; the various execution sites around the area that still retain the evidence of what occurred there - bullet holes, blood, broken buildings.

''[There were] 100,000 people at the 10th anniversary of Srebrenica at the cemetery at Potocari, which was absolutely extraordinary to witness.''

According to Judah, Mladic's network of military support appeared to have broken down after the arrest of former Serb leader Karadzic. He said Mladic was often described in ''caricature terms as a ruddy-cheeked soldier's soldier. In fact, he was much more than that.''

Judah said Mladic was a ''true crusader for the cause. From the way he talked, fixing his interlocutor with his piercing eyes, it was clear that Mladic … believed the survival of the Serbs depended on a fight to the death in which no quarter should be given.

''Compromise was not a word in Mladic's vocabulary. If mass killing was good enough for Karadjordje [leader of the first Serb uprising against the Ottomans], it was good enough for his men.''

A decade and a half later, there are Serb nationalists who insist that Mladic's actions were no better nor worse than those of Bosnian Muslim forces or those of the Croats during the terrible wars that saw the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Mladic is still seen by some as a war hero, his face occasionally found on postcards and calendars. Even yesterday, his widely reported arrest led police to set up special patrols in case of public unrest.

A revealing poll, uncovered by the BBC and first published in the Croatian daily Vecernji on May 16, shows Mladic still enjoys strong support among many Serbs, with 51 per cent of those surveyed saying they would not send Mladic to the war crimes tribunal and 40 per cent still viewing him as a hero.

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Read more: www.theage.com.au/world/justice-comes-knocking-for-mladic-closing-a-bloody-chapter-for-balkans-20110527-1f8kk.html#ixzz1Nb8HRa1H

[oskar]

The reason I am harping on this is the number of American voices defending their actions over bin Laden with comments like "What else could have been done?". Well, here is your answer, in the clearest possible terms.

They still won't "get it".

[MacBeth]

Some still don't get it and some never had to be convinced

[MacBeth]

Questions about Ratko Mladic
By Glenn Greenwald




The individual whom The New York Times describes as Europe's "most wanted war crimes suspect" was captured yesterday in Serbia and will likely be extradited to be tried before an international war crimes tribunal at the Hague:

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general held responsible for the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested on Thursday . . .

The massacre at Srebrenica was the worst ethnically motivated mass murder on the European continent since World War II. Mr. Mladic was also accused of war crimes for the three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo, in which 10,000 people died, including 3,500 children. . . .

Mr. Mladic's crimes remained an emotional issue for the Dutch, whose peacekeepers were overrun at Srebrenica, allowing Mr. Mladic’s soldiers to mow down men and boys, their hands tied behind their backs.

"His arrest gives a strong signal to the world that anyone accused of the worst crimes can be brought to justice," said Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor for the United Nations-based war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

I have two questions about this:

(1) The NYT says that, for Europe, Mladic's arrest "has a resonance on the magnitude of the killing of Osama bin Laden for Americans." That's understandable, as the crimes of which Mladic is accused are at least as grave and serious as those bin Laden allegedly committed. Mladic is almost certainly responsible for more deaths than the Al Qaeda leader was. There is probably less doubt about his guilt worldwide than there was (and is) about bin Laden's. And when he was found, Mladic "had two pistols with him" (though "he made no attempt to use" them).

In light of all that, what's the point of arresting Mladic and putting him on trial? Why is that considered "bringing him to justice"? Why not just pump his skull full of bullets and dump his corpse into the ocean, and then proclaim that "justice has been done"? For those who have embraced the idea that we are "at war" with Al Qaeda, one could argue that that "war" is still ongoing while the Bosnian war has long been over, but, beyond legalisms, why is that a difference that matters? If "justice" demands that this heinous Serbian war criminal be arrested and tried before being punished, why was the same not true for bin Laden?

(2) This European fixation on apprehending Mladic was the ultimate exercise in "Looking Backward, not Forward." His accused crimes took place more than 15 years ago in a war that has been over for more than a decade. He's now 75 years old, completely stripped of any remnants of power, and reportedly in ill health ("he appeared disoriented and tired, and [] one of his hands appeared to be paralyzed, possibly because of a stroke"). Moreover, his trial is certain to spawn extreme divisiveness, potentially opening up still-sensitive wounds in that region, given that -- like Slobodan Milosevic, whose arrest sparked widespread Serbian anger -- Mladic is still considered a hero by many Serbian nationalists:

Some Serbian officials also reacted with anger, illustrating that the country was still struggling to come to terms with the past. Boris Aleksic, a spokesman for the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, said: “Serb traitors have arrested a Serb hero. This shameful arrest of a Serb general is a blow to our national interests and the state.”

By all accounts, Serbian authorities could have arrested him long ago but finally did so because of the extreme pressure brought to bear by EU leaders.

Why is it legitimate to demand that Serbians Look Backward and risk extreme domestic divisiveness in order to punish their accused war criminals, while the U.S. refuses to do so? Conversely, why is it legitimate to shield accused American war criminals of all accountability on the ground that investigating and prosecuting them would distract from The Future and trigger political conflict, but not allow Serbians the same luxury? I have no doubt that there are hordes of Americans happy about Mladic's arrest while simultaneously supportive of Obama's Look Forward decree for American war criminals, all without bothering to resolve -- or even recognize -- the glaring, self-serving inconsistency at the heart of that mentality.



www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/05/27/mladic&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Premium%29_7_30_110

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Wow! There's some plain speaking.

[oskar]

IMO, there's only a minor difference between the US and bin Laden/Al Qauda - bin Laden/Al Qauda struck first.