Ratko Mladic, accused of Srebrenica massacre, Yugoslav war crimes, gestures angrily at trial start
Former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic arrives May 16, 2012, at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague before the opening of his war-crimes trial. / AFP/Getty Images
Updated at 1:18 p.m. ET
(AP) THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Ratko Mladic was a shadow of the swaggering general who once "held Sarajevo in the palm of his hand" during Bosnia's 1992-95 war as his long-awaited genocide trial opened Wednesday. Yet he still managed to inflame Bosnia's festering war wounds with the flick of his hand.
Hobbled by strokes and wearing a business suit instead of combat fatigues, the frail 70-year-old gestured toward the families of massacre victims in an angry exchange of hand signals through the bulletproof glass that separated them.
"Not even an animal would behave like that," said Mevlija Malic as she watched the trial on television in Bosnia.
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Mladic is accused of commanding Bosnian Serb troops who opened the war with a campaign of murder and persecution to drive Muslims and Croats out of territory they considered part of Serbia. His troops rained shells and snipers' bullets down on civilians in the 44-month-long siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and butchered 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995, Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
"The world watched in disbelief that in neighborhoods and villages within Europe a genocide appeared to be in progress," prosecutor Dermot Groome said at the U.N. court in The Hague.
Twenty years after the war that left 100,000 dead, Bosnia remains divided into two ministates — one for Serbs, the other shared by Bosnian Muslims and Croats — linked by a central government.
Mladic fled into hiding after the war and spent 15 years as a fugitive before international pressure on Serbia led to his arrest last year. Now he is held in a one-man cell in a special international wing of a Dutch jail and receives food and medical care that would likely be the envy of many in Bosnia.
But the fact that he is jailed and on trial is another victory for international justice and hailed by observers as evidence that war crimes tribunals more often than not get their indicted suspects, even if they have to wait years. In another court in The Hague on Wednesday, former Liberian President Charles Taylor faced a sentencing hearing after being convicted last month of aiding rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone's civil war.
That is heartening news for the International Criminal Court, which has indicted the likes of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide but appears nowhere close to having him arrested.
In a demonstration of Bosnia's continuing ethnic divide, people who gathered in the Serb stronghold of Pale to watch the trial on television applauded as they saw the ex-general enter the courtroom.
"Mladic is our hero, it's sad that we see him there," said Milan Ivanovic, a 20-year-old law student.
Prosecutor Groome told the three-judge panel Wednesday that Mladic was hand-picked by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic because of his skills as a military commander but also "because Karadzic believed he was willing to commit the crimes needed to achieve the strategic goals of the Bosnian Serb leadership."
Groome signaled that prosecutors would use Mladic's own words against him in the trial, drawing on a stash of wartime diaries Mladic kept, radio intercepts and appearances he made on television during the war.
In one such TV appearance, Mladic showed a news team around the Serb artillery dug into hills overlooking Sarajevo and denied any involvement in war crimes — foreshadowing his defense now that his actions were intended only to protect Serbs.
"I did not take part in any crimes. I have only defended my people," Mladic said. He has refused to enter pleas to the 11 charges against him in The Hague but denies wrongdoing.
However in another video he is heard boasting, "whenever I come by Sarajevo, I kill someone in passing ... I go kick the hell out of the Turks" — a denigrating reference to Bosnian Muslims.
"(Mladic) held Sarajevo in the palm of his hand," Groome said, playing an intercepted radio communication of Mladic ordering the shelling of part of the city and a video of civilians scurrying across devastated streets to avoid sniper fire during Sarajevo's siege.
Groome said all the attacks were part of an "overarching" plan hatched by Karadzic and former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to ethnically cleanse large parts of Bosnia of non-Serbs and carve out a "Greater Serbia" from the ruins of the former Yugoslavia.
Karadzic is also on trial at the tribunal following his 2008 arrest. Milosevic was put on trial here, too, for fomenting wars across the Balkans, but he died of a heart attack in 2006 before judges could deliver their verdict.
Prosecutors say they will use evidence against Mladic from more than 400 witnesses, though very few of them will testify in court. Much of their evidence already has been heard in other cases and will be admitted as written statements.
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To deprive a person of self defense is, within itself, a crime against humanity. The people prosecuting Ratko for crimes against humaity are guilty of this act themselves. No one should prevent a people from engaging in self protection of their culture, religion, and society.
If the muslims were peacefull and did not want to kill Christians then Ratko would have never needed to take the actions which he did. And don't forget, all have the right to defend their culture and religion. islam is not a religion but a murderous cult and therefore has no right to prosper or expand it's existance. Proof positive is the fact almost all current wars are wars instigated by muslims.
Ratko should be set free and awarded a medal. The prosecutors should be arrested and charged with crimes against humanity for not allowing a people their self defence and thus contributing to the destruction of their culture, society and legitimate religion.
And while we're at it, Ex President Bill Clinton should also be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by his ordering the bombing of Serb Christians when they were only trying to protect themselves agains muslim expansion and the killing of Christians.
You need to stop reading propaganda and travel down to Bosnia and talk to people on both sides, then you'll see what's really going on. You are in fact more ignorant than Grumple1 above. He's being general about Muslims, but usually only extremists are dangerous (and extremists can be found in any place). But he has a valid point; why would anyone simply attack someone without cause. There's always a reason and that reason was self-defence.
FYI, Bush & Co have been judged for war crimes in Kuala Lumpur. The sentence will be handed over to the UN and Security Council for enforcement. Naturally, no big news channels have brought this into the light...how convenient.