Case stirs up deep emotionsThe case has stirred up deep emotions in the Balkans and Wednesday's proceedings were broadcast live on big screens in Sarajevo, where thousands died between 1992 and 1995."I hope that many of those who are disillusioned and believe that Mladic is a Serb hero will change their minds, and that the trial will demonstrate that he was just a criminal and a coward," Fikret Grabovica, president of the association of parents and children killed in the siege of Sarajevo, told Reuters."My father is gone and the agony continues for the victims," said Bosnian Muslim Sudbin Music, who represents a group of wartime prisoners."Even if Mladic lives until the verdict, it will bring only mild satisfaction for the victims of Srebrenica and hundreds of other places in the Serb Republic.Mladic has been angry and defiant during pre-trial hearings, heckling the judge, shouting and interrupting the proceedings."The whole world knows who I am," he told a hearing last year. "I am General Ratko Mladic. I defended my people, my country ... now I am defending myself."Mladic was in charge of the Bosnian Serb army when, over several days in July 1995, Serb fighters overran the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia, theoretically under the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers.Video footage shot at the time showed Mladic mingling with Muslim prisoners. Shortly afterwards, the men and boys were separated from the women, stripped of identification, and shot.Victims bulldozed into mass gravesThe dead were bulldozed into mass graves, then later dug up with excavators and hauled away in trucks to be better hidden from the world, in dozens of remote mass graves.Prosecutors say Mladic was part of a "joint criminal enterprise to eliminate the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica by killing the men and boys ... and forcibly removing the women, young children and some elderly men".Mladic is also held responsible for the siege and bombardment of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which prosecutors said was intended to "spread terror among the civilian population".The horrors of the siege, together with the Srebrenica massacre, eventually galvanised world opinion in support of the campaign of Western air strikes on Bosnian Serb targets that brought the conflict to an end shortly after.Mladic was indicted in 1995 along with Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serbs' political leader.Yet both remained free in Serbia for more than a decade before being tracked down and sent to The Hague. Karadzic's trial is already under way.Defence lawyers say they have not had have enough time to review the huge case file prepared by prosecutors and asked for the trial to be postponed, but the request was denied.Serge Brammertz, the court's chief prosecutor, has dismissed Mladic's assertion that he is too frail to sit through a 200-hour prosecution case involving testimony from 411 witnesses.His appearance in The Hague is testament to the work of the tribunal, which has defied sceptics by managing, in the course of 19 years, to arrest all its 161 indictees.But some victims still fear that Mladic, who has received physical therapy for a possible stroke, could escape judgment by dying in mid-trial.Mladic's mentor, former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, the architect of the Balkan wars, died in detention in 2006, a few months before a verdict in his trial for genocide and other war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Mladic taunts survivors at start of genocide trial
Bosnian Serb general faces possible life imprisonment for allegedly leading slaughter of 8,000 unarmed Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995.
Case stirs up deep emotionsThe case has stirred up deep emotions in the Balkans and Wednesday's proceedings were broadcast live on big screens in Sarajevo, where thousands died between 1992 and 1995."I hope that many of those who are disillusioned and believe that Mladic is a Serb hero will change their minds, and that the trial will demonstrate that he was just a criminal and a coward," Fikret Grabovica, president of the association of parents and children killed in the siege of Sarajevo, told Reuters."My father is gone and the agony continues for the victims," said Bosnian Muslim Sudbin Music, who represents a group of wartime prisoners."Even if Mladic lives until the verdict, it will bring only mild satisfaction for the victims of Srebrenica and hundreds of other places in the Serb Republic.Mladic has been angry and defiant during pre-trial hearings, heckling the judge, shouting and interrupting the proceedings."The whole world knows who I am," he told a hearing last year. "I am General Ratko Mladic. I defended my people, my country ... now I am defending myself."Mladic was in charge of the Bosnian Serb army when, over several days in July 1995, Serb fighters overran the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia, theoretically under the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers.Video footage shot at the time showed Mladic mingling with Muslim prisoners. Shortly afterwards, the men and boys were separated from the women, stripped of identification, and shot.Victims bulldozed into mass gravesThe dead were bulldozed into mass graves, then later dug up with excavators and hauled away in trucks to be better hidden from the world, in dozens of remote mass graves.Prosecutors say Mladic was part of a "joint criminal enterprise to eliminate the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica by killing the men and boys ... and forcibly removing the women, young children and some elderly men".Mladic is also held responsible for the siege and bombardment of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which prosecutors said was intended to "spread terror among the civilian population".The horrors of the siege, together with the Srebrenica massacre, eventually galvanised world opinion in support of the campaign of Western air strikes on Bosnian Serb targets that brought the conflict to an end shortly after.Mladic was indicted in 1995 along with Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serbs' political leader.Yet both remained free in Serbia for more than a decade before being tracked down and sent to The Hague. Karadzic's trial is already under way.Defence lawyers say they have not had have enough time to review the huge case file prepared by prosecutors and asked for the trial to be postponed, but the request was denied.Serge Brammertz, the court's chief prosecutor, has dismissed Mladic's assertion that he is too frail to sit through a 200-hour prosecution case involving testimony from 411 witnesses.His appearance in The Hague is testament to the work of the tribunal, which has defied sceptics by managing, in the course of 19 years, to arrest all its 161 indictees.But some victims still fear that Mladic, who has received physical therapy for a possible stroke, could escape judgment by dying in mid-trial.Mladic's mentor, former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, the architect of the Balkan wars, died in detention in 2006, a few months before a verdict in his trial for genocide and other war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.