Ratko Mladic, the ‘Butcher of Bosnia,’ guilty of genocide in last Balkan war crimes trial


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Griff  Witte  in the Washington Post, November 22,  2017

A U.N. tribunal Nov. 22 convicted former Serb warlord Ratko Mladic of genocide and crimes against humanity for orchestrating massacres and ethnic cleansing during Bosnia’s war and sentenced him to life in prison.

— Ratko Mladic, a former Serb warlord who commanded forces that carried out some of the worst atrocities of the Balkan wars, was found guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity by an international tribunal Wednesday.

Mladic, 74, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the bloodiest chapter of European history since World War II.

“Mladic is the epitome of evil, and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of what international justice is all about,” said U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-HusseinOrie said in reading the verdict that Mladic’s crimes “rank among the most heinous known to humankind.” The judgment came after a trial that lasted more than four years, and involved testimony from nearly 600 witnesses.

They recounted a litany of horrors carried out by forces under Mladic’s command during the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, which claimed upward of 100,000 lives. The atrocities included sniper attacks, indiscriminate shelling, mass executions, and imprisonment in camps where people died of malnourishment and disease.

Perhaps most horrific was the Mladic-directed July 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, a supposed U.N. safe haven. Mladic was also convicted of orchestrating the destruction of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, through a four-year siege punctuated by shelling and sniper fire.
“Burn their brains!” witnesses reported Mladic, a career military man, shouting as he watched his troops shell the city….

Mladic handed out sweets and offered reassuring words to the town’s Muslim children just hours before his forces executed thousands of men and boys there. Many of the victims were shot in the back of the head, their arms bound behind them.

If you’re talking about a typical example of something, call it the epitome. The cartoon character Garfield is the epitome of the fat, lazy, food-obsessed cat, Président Trump the epitome of superficiality. There is no depth to this man.