Mladic on trial for war crimes, genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, went on trial here on Wednesday, May 16 for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from some of the bloodiest events of the Bosnian war in the 1990s, including the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo, The New York Times reports.

The court heard a prosecutor’s recital of atrocities said to have been committed by soldiers directly under Mladic’s command as Bosnian Serb units carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing and, in Sarajevo, directed a “spigot of terror” that could be opened or closed at will against the civilian population.

Twenty years after the war started as the former Yugoslavia fragmented, the 11-count indictment against him laid out details of the worst killings of the conflict, when Sarajevo was subjected to a 44-month campaign of sniping and shelling in which more than 10,000 people died. He is the last of the major players in the Bosnian conflict to face trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Mladic, who was captured in May 2011, faces two counts of genocide - one for the ethnic cleansing campaign and a second for a massacre during the war’s climax, when Mr. Mladic’s forces overran a small contingent of United Nations peacekeepers in Srebrenica.

Some 8,000 unarmed men and boys were killed over several days in July 1995 in what were portrayed as acts of vengeance for Serbian deaths at the hands of Muslims.

“By the time Mladic and his troops murdered thousands in Srebrenica,” said Dermot Groome, the prosecutor, “they were well-rehearsed in the craft of murder.”

Mladic has refused to enter a formal plea but has said he is not guilty of wrongdoing. The court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf on Wednesday.