War crimes fugitive: Ratko Mladic

25/07/2008

Former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic now tops the ICTY most-wanted list since the arrest of Radovan Karadzic. Mladic has been running from authorities since 2000.

(Various sources)

Ratko Mladic. [File]

Former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic is one of the most wanted indictees of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He was originally indicted together with former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic in July 1995. The ICTY confirmed a second indictment in November that year. It issued an amended indictment, covering the period between May 12th 1992 and December 22nd 1996, in November 2002.

Mladic was born on March 12th 1943 in Kalinovik, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Following training at the military academy of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in Belgrade, he joined the JNA as a regular officer. He was posted to Knin, Croatia, in 1991 as commander of the JNA's 9th Corps. In April 1992, he took command of the JNA's Second Military District, based in Sarajevo. The following month he became commander of the main staff of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), a position he held until December 1996.

The indictment charges Mladic, on the basis of his individual and superior criminal responsibility, with 13 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war for the acts of persecution, murder, deportation and inhumane acts, terrorising and hostage taking, in which he allegedly participated. In addition, he faces two counts of genocide for -- including, but not only -- the massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men during the Serb onslaught against the UN safe haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.

According to the indictment, Mladic "committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the intentional partial destruction of the Bosnian Muslim national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, from Kljuc, Kotor Varos, Prijedor, Sanski Most, and Srebrenica".

The indictment also alleges that from May 1992, forces under Mladic's command sniped at and shelled the city of Sarajevo, killing and wounding civilians and thereby inflicting terror on the population. The 44-month siege of the BiH capital reportedly killed about 10,500 people, including 1,800 children, and injured 50,000 people.

The former VRS chief, according to the indictment, acting individually or in concert with others, participated in a joint criminal enterprise within BiH seeking the "elimination or permanent removal, by force or other means, of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat, or other non-Serb inhabitants from large areas of the country".

Charging Mladic with superior criminal responsibility for acts and omissions between May 12th 1992 and December 22nd 1996, ICTY prosecutors said that as the most senior VRS officer at the time, he was subordinate only to the Bosnian Serb president. "As such he had overall authority and responsibility for the functioning of the VRS. He was responsible for planning and directing all operations of the VRS and for monitoring the activities of all subordinate officers and units to ensure that his orders were implemented."

Mladic also allegedly bore individual responsibility for war crimes, "which he planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or in whose planning, preparation or execution he otherwise aided and abetted".

Following the end of the conflict in BiH, Mladic returned to Belgrade, where he lived freely under the protection of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and often appeared at football matches, in restaurants and on Montenegrin beaches. After a reformist government led by late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic came to power -- following the overthrow of the Milosevic regime in October 2000 -- Mladic reportedly left Belgrade to avoid possible arrest and handover to The Hague-based tribunal.

But former chief ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte repeatedly insisted that the fugitive was in Serbia, enjoying military protection. Belgrade authorities have denied it.

However, revelations in late 2004 appeared to substantiate del Ponte's allegations. A late-November report in a Sarajevo daily included Mladic's military personnel files, showing his respective discharges from the Yugoslav Army in 2001 and from the VRS in 2002. Several days later, Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed that Mladic was receiving his pension from the Serbian-Montenegrin military on a regular basis and that his right to it was irrevocable.

Diplomatic sources further indicated that in the summer of 2004 Mladic was sheltered at a military complex near the town of Han Pijesak in eastern BiH and that he had lived in Serbia in early June of that year.