Ex-Bosnian Serb commander Mladic convicted of genocide, gets life in prison

[snoop1130]

Ex-Bosnian Serb commander Mladic convicted of genocide, gets life in prison

By Toby Sterling, Stephanie van den Berg and Anthony Deutsch

 

 

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A U.N. tribunal on Wednesday convicted former Bosnian Serb military commander 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.

 

Mladic, 74, was hustled out of the court minutes before the verdict for screaming "this is all lies, you are all liars" after returning from what his son described as a blood pressure test which delayed the reading-out of the judgement.

 

The U.N. Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Mladic guilty of 10 of 11 charges, including the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and the siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in which more than 11,000 civilians were killed by shelling and sniper fire over 43 months.

 

The killings in Srebrenica of men and boys after they were separated from women and taken away in buses or marched off to be shot amounted to Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

 

"The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity," Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said in reading out a summary of the judgement.

 

"Many of these men and boys were cursed, insulted, threatened, forced to sing Serb songs and beaten while awaiting their execution," he said.

 

Mladic, the most notorious of the ICTY's cases along with ex-Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, had pleaded not guilty to all charges and is expected to appeal against his conviction.

 

In its summary, the tribunal found Mladic "significantly contributed" to genocide committed in Srebrenica with the goal of destroying its Muslim population, "personally directed" the long bombardment of Sarajevo and was part of a "joint criminal enterprise" intending to purge Muslims and Croats from Bosnia.

 

In Geneva, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein called Mladic the "epitome of evil" and said his conviction after 16 years as an indicted fugitive and over four years of trial was a "momentous victory for justice".

 

"The prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of what international justice is all about," Zeid said in a statement.

 

"Today’s verdict is a warning to the perpetrators of such crimes that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take."

 

"RESPECT THE VICTIMS, LOOK TO THE FUTURE" - SERBIA

 

Aleksandar Vucic, president of Serbia whose late nationalist strongman Milosevic was Mladic's patron but died in a tribunal prison before the end of his trial, said Serbia "respects the victims" and called for a focus on the future.

 

"I would like to call on everyone (in the region) to start looking into the future and not to drown in tears of the past... We need to look to the future...so we finally have a stable country," Vucic told reporters when asked about the verdict.

 

Serbia, once the most powerful Yugoslav republic, is now democratic and seeking ties to the European Union.

 

Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic said he hoped that "those who still call for new divisions and conflicts will carefully read the verdict rendered today ...in case that they are still no ready to face their past".

 

He was alluding to enduring separatism in post-war federal Bosnia's autonomous Serb region.

 

Srebrenica, near Bosnia's eastern border with Serbia, had been designated a "safe area" by the United Nations and was defended by lightly armed U.N. peacekeepers. But they quickly surrendered when Mladic's forces stormed it on July 11, 1995.

 

SREBRENICA SLAUGHTER

 

The Dutch peacekeepers looked on helplessly as Serb forces separated men and boys from women, then sent them out of sight on buses or marched them away to be shot.

 

A bronzed and burly Mladic was filmed visiting a refugee camp in Srebrenica on July 12. "He was giving away chocolate and sweets to the children while the cameras were rolling, telling us nothing will happen and that we have no reason to be afraid," recalled Munira Subasic of the Mothers of Srebrenica group.

 

"After the cameras left he gave an order to kill whoever could be killed, rape whoever could be raped and finally he ordered us all to be banished and chased out of Srebrenica, so he could make an 'ethnically clean' city," she told Reuters.

 

The remains of Subasic's son Nermin and husband Hilmo were both found in mass graves by International Commission of Missing Persons (ICMP) workers. The ICMP have identified some 6,900 remains of Srebrenica victims through DNA analysis.

 

Mladic's lawyers argued that his responsibility for murder and ethnic cleansing of civilians by Serb forces and allied paramilitaries was never established beyond reasonable doubt and he should get no more than 15 years if convicted.

 

The "Butcher of Bosnia" to his enemies, Mladic is still seen as a national hero by some Serbs for presiding over the swift capture of 70 percent of Bosnia after its Serbs rose up against a Muslim-Croat declaration of independence from Yugoslavia.

 

"GREATER SERBIA"

 

Prosecutors said the ultimate plan pursued by Mladic, Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and Milosevic was to purge Bosnia of non-Serbs - a strategy that became known as "ethnic cleansing" - and carve out a "Greater Serbia" in the ashes of federal Yugoslavia's disintegration.

 

Mladic was indicted along with Karadzic in 1995, shortly after the Srebrenica killings, but evaded capture until 2011.

 

His trial in The Hague took more than four years in part because of delays due to his poor health and will be the last case - barring appeals - to be heard by the ICTY.

 

Mladic has suffered several strokes, though ICTY judges rejected a flurry of last-minute attempts by defence lawyers to put off the verdict on medical grounds.

 

His lawyers faced an uphill battle, given a mountain of evidence of Serb atrocities produced in previous trials. Four of Mladic's subordinates received life sentences. Karadzic was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years, and is appealing.

 

Mladic's lawyers argued that Sarajevo was a legitimate military target as it was the main bastion of Muslim-led Bosnian government forces. They also asserted that Mladic left Srebrenica shortly before Serb fighters began executing Muslim detainees and was later shocked to find out they had occurred.

 

Prosecutors countered that under war crimes law, even if Mladic did not directly order the killings, he should have known what his subordinates were doing, and would be liable for failing to punish those who committed atrocities.

 

The ICTY indicted 161 people in all from Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. It has convicted 83, more than 60 of them ethnic Serbs.

 

(Additional reporting by Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade, Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo and Tom Miles in Geneva; editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-11-22

[Stargeezr]

Hope he gets all the quality rats in his jail for life sentence.

Geezer

[sanuk711]

 

Wow ...its been that long I had nearly forgotten about him.....

 

14 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

capital Sarajevo, in which more than 11,000 civilians were killed by shelling and sniper fire over 43 months.

As the leader it seems he is responsible for all actions during that war....

 

Mean while as the Emperor of Japan passes peacefully away surrounded by his love ones who will put on a mass funeral party for him....

.

Some historians and governments hold Japanese military forces, namely the Imperial Japanese Army, the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the Imperial Japanese family, especially under Emperor Hirohito, responsible for the deaths of millions, some estimate between 3 and 14 million civilians and prisoners of war through massacre, human experimentation, starvation, and forced labor that was either directly perpetrated or condoned by the Japanese military and government. Some Japanese soldiers have admitted to committing these crimes.

.

Please do not mistake this post as any sort of apology for the crimes of Ratko Mladic  The man is a dog.

 

Just pointing out......Politics....its a funny thing ain't it ...........

 

[Kiwiken]

Because NATO took down this Generals forces. He was tried as a war criminal. And probably justly. But all the other criminals of this bloody cruel conflict get away Scot free because they are not Serbs and not the Boogie men. All sides including NATO were guilty of War crimes but only Serbs are prosecuted.

 

[simple1]

13 hours ago, Kiwiken said:

Because NATO took down this Generals forces. He was tried as a war criminal. And probably justly. But all the other criminals of this bloody cruel conflict get away Scot free because they are not Serbs and not the Boogie men. All sides including NATO were guilty of War crimes but only Serbs are prosecuted.

 

Incorrect. List of those convicted to date at URL below.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the_International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_the_former_Yugoslavia

 

NATO forces committing War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia; got the links for the allegations?

[sanuk711]

22 hours ago, Kiwiken said:

. All sides including NATO were guilty of War crimes but only Serbs are prosecuted

Only the winning side writes the history Kiwiken----

[ilostmypassword]

1 hour ago, sanuk711 said:

Only the winning side writes the history Kiwiken----

Apparently it's just the opposite with Kwiken and the Serbs He asserted that only Serbs got prosecuted. The link from simple_1 clearly shows that this was untrue. The Serbs have never stopped manufacturing a false narrative of the war, even to the present day.

[ilostmypassword]

Serbia’s Brand of Reconciliation: Embracing Old War Criminals

When a general convicted of war crimes gave a lecture last month to cadets at the military academy in Serbia’s capital, he received a warm welcome from the defense minister.

The nation should feel “proud” of veterans like the general, “the bravest of the brave,” the minister said.

So it was no surprise that after another general, Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes this week, President Aleksandar Vucic called the verdict “unjustified.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/europe/serbia-war-crimes-russia.html

[Scott]

Posts violating Fair Use Policy and replies removed.   You can only quote 3 sentences and a link.  

[bannork]

Good to see justice working even if it took so long. He is a mass murderer, evil personified.