Ratko Mladic, former general convicted of Bosnia genocide, dies

“GERMANS HAD HITLER, SERBS HAVE MLADIC”

Karadzic, also convicted of genocide in 2016, and Mladic topped the ICTY wanted list for years after Western powers ended the war. But until Milosevic was toppled by a popular uprising in 2000, Mladic lived securely – if discreetly – in Belgrade.

Milosevic died in detention on Mar 11, 2006, a few months before a verdict in his four-year tribunal trial for genocide and other war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The army Mladic created to fight in Bosnia was a model of ruthlessness, daring and brutality in the Serb warrior tradition, once prized in the life-or-death partisan struggle against the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in World War Two.

In some of the most horrific examples, prisoners suffocated in the heat after being forced to eat salt and denied water; were starved and raped in prison camps; were made to jump off a bridge and shot; and were gunned down at night by the hundreds after being driven out of detention with chemical gas.

“For me Mladic is a symbol of all horrible crimes that happened during the war – our girls were raped, and boys killed, only because they were Muslim,” said Munira Subasic, whose son and husband were killed by Bosnian Serb forces after they overran Srebrenica.

“Germans had Hitler, Serbs have Mladic,” Subasic continued. “There is no difference between the two.”

Mladic had a cameraman film the blitz on the encircled enclave of Srebrenica, to show him extolling his “lads” and haranguing Dutch UN peacekeepers who misguidedly accepted his solemn word that the inhabitants would be safe in his hands. Srebrenica supposedly had “safe area” status, meant to protect civilians from ethnic cleansing.

“We give this town to the Serb people as a gift,” Mladic said to the camera, claiming the victory as revenge against Muslim Turks, who once held the area as part of the Ottoman Empire.

The next day, Mladic‘s forces were filmed handing out sweets to children, promising their safe passage. Meanwhile, thousands of men and boys were being readied for execution.

When NATO tried in 1995 to rein in his forces with the threat of limited air strikes, his troops defiantly seized UN peacekeepers as human shields, chaining them to likely targets.

In November 1996 Mladic and top generals gave in to strong Western pressure that he step down as ordered by Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, who succeeded Karadzic and was later jailed for her role in war crimes.