From the BBC:
“Srebrenica massacre: UN court
rejects Mladic genocide appeal”
Former Bosnian Serb commander
Ratko Mladic has lost his appeal against a 2017 conviction for genocide, war
crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN court upheld the life sentence for his
role in the killing of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys in
Srebrenica in 1995. The massacre, in an enclave supposed to be under UN
protection, was the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two. It is not yet
clear where Mladic will serve the rest of his sentence. The five-person appeals
panel found Mladic had failed to provide evidence to invalidate the previous
convictions against him, although the presiding judge dissented on almost all
counts. However, the Appeals Chamber also dismissed the appeal brought by the
prosecution, which had sought a second conviction against Mladic over crimes
committed against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats in some other areas during
the war. The verdict was delayed by technical difficulties, which continued
throughout the session. Mladic had denounced the tribunal during his appeal
hearing in August, calling it a child of Western powers. His lawyers had argued
he was far away from Srebrenica when the massacre happened.
Mladic, known as the
"Butcher of Bosnia", was one of the last suspects to face trial at
the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was
arrested in 2011 after 16 years on the run. In 2017 he was found guilty of
genocide over Srebrenica, but acquitted of genocide over his army's 1992
campaign, in which Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats were expelled from their homes
or detained in appalling conditions. In 2016, the same court convicted former
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of planning the Srebrenica massacre, among
other crimes. His initial 40-year sentence for genocide and war crimes was
later increased to life in prison in 2019 - the remainder of which he will
serve in the UK.
What has the reaction been? Survivor
Semso Osmanovic, who lost 23 family members in the massacre, told the BBC's Guy
De Launey that the verdict meant he finally felt able to return to his home
town. "I was living the whole of my life for this moment - to see
justice being done by the international court. And hoping to bring my children
and my wife to Srebrenica," he said. "That's the place I was
born." Sehida Abdurahmanovic, whose husband was killed in
Srebrenica, watched the verdict at a memorial centre in Potocari. "Mothers
who barely hear, who can not see, those sick and can hardly walk, came to see
this. As it was yesterday, everything is still fresh," she told BBC News
Serbian. "It is of utmost importance that he got this life sentence
and that genocide in Srebrenica was confirmed." In Sarajevo, one
Bosnian newspaper led its online coverage of the verdict with the headline:
"Look at the butcher's tears when he realises that he will die behind
bars." But the reaction among Mladic's supporters was very
different. The former general's son, Darko Mladic, said his father "did
not have a chance for a fair trial" and described the proceedings as
"a travelling circus". The current president of the Bosnian Serb
enclave, Zeljka Cvijanovic, said the tribunal had "once again confirmed its
role as anti-Serb court, which establishes responsibility for war crimes not by
evidence, but by the ethnicity of the indicted".
" Long wait for justice He
has blood on his hands," Munira Subasic told me when I visited her home, a
short walk away from the killing fields of Srebrenica. Ratko Mladic was
the enforcer of a political plot, engineered at the top, to make sections of
Bosnia's Muslim population disappear. The ethnic cleansing began with
persecution - propaganda turned neighbours against one another - and for many
thousands it ended when Ratko Mladic's men overran the UN base at Potocari, a
designated safe zone. It was here that Munira's 17-year old son Nermin
was torn from her arms, as he tried to reassure her everything would be fine.
Twenty-two members of her family perished in the genocide. Ratko Mladic
spent 16 years as a fugitive; many feared he wouldn't live to see this final
legal judgment. Munira travelled to The Hague to witness the moment she
believes will bring her peace. Prosecutors here hope this trial sends a
message that resonates in the region and beyond - that justice delayed does not
mean justice denied.
What happened during the
appeal? The hearing in August had been delayed by Mladic's health problems
and coronavirus restrictions. He remained defiant throughout, attacking
both the court and the prosecutor. Speaking about Srebrenica, he said he
had signed an agreement with the Bosnian Muslim army to honour it and other
protected areas, and suggested he was not to blame for any violation of these
zones. But prosecution lawyer Laurel Baig said Mladic had been convicted
of some of "the most heinous crimes of the 20th Century". "Mladic
was in charge of the Srebrenica operation," she said. "He used the
forces under his command to execute thousands of men and boys." A
defence lawyer, Dragan Ivetic, denied his client had played a role, saying:
"Mr Mladic is not a villain. He was someone who at all times was trying to
help the UN do the job it couldn't do in Srebrenica at a humanitarian
level."
How did the genocide happen? Between
1991 and 1999 the socialist state of Yugoslavia broke up violently into
separate entities covering the territories of what were then Serbia and
Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia. Of
all the conflicts, the war in Bosnia was the bloodiest as, ethnically and
religiously, it was the most divided. Yugoslav army units, withdrawn
from Croatia and renamed the Bosnian Serb Army, carved out a huge swathe of
Serb-dominated territory in Bosnia. More than a million Bosniaks and
Croats were driven from their homes in so-called ethnic cleansing, and Serbs
suffered too. By the time the war ended in 1995, at least 100,000 people had
been killed. At the end of the war in 1995, Mladic went into hiding and
lived in obscurity in Serbia, protected by family and elements of the security
forces. He was finally tracked down and arrested at a cousin's house in
rural northern Serbia in 2011.
^ It is true justice to see that
the man responsible for the worst Genocide in Europe since World War 2 is going
to die in prison. Then he will be looking up at the rest of us. ^
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