Mladic never admitted guilt, and his defense was chillingly simple: “I fought for my nation.”
At dawn on 26 May 2011, four black off-road vehicles drove into the village of Lazarevo, deep in northern Serbia near the Romanian border. More than 20 handpicked members of the Serbian police’s counterterrorism unit – wearing unmarked black uniforms, whose names no one was ever allowed to know – pulled black ski masks over their faces and cocked their weapons.
The vehicles pulled up silently, each stopping in front of a different house belonging to relatives of the internationally wanted war criminal, General Ratko Mladic. Everyone in the village was still asleep.
The police officers knew exactly what they were looking for; the only thing they didn’t know was which of the four houses Ratko Mladic was spending the night in – but they got lucky. They hit the mark on their first try when they stormed into his cousin’s house.
Behind the kicked-in front door, they came upon a shocked Mladic, who was just heading out for an early morning walk in the garden. He was unable to use either of the two pistols he had on him.
Five days later, the “Butcher of Bosnia,” as he was nicknamed, was flown to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague to be taken into custody. His old friend, Zoran Stankovic – the former Serbian minister of defense and then minister of health – came there to say goodbye to him.
Since July 1995, when an international arrest warrant was issued for Mladic, almost 16 years had passed.
No Touching the Pension
On 22 November 2017, the tribunal sentenced him to life in prison after finding him guilty on one count of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, and four counts of violations of the laws of war.
Upon entering the courtroom, Mladic smiled broadly and gave the cameras a thumbs-up. He repeatedly insulted the tribunal and was even ordered to leave the courtroom. He never admitted guilt on any charge, and his defense was chillingly simple: “I fought for my nation.”
As a military commander in the wars of the disintegrating Yugoslavia, he was not much of a leader. In fact, he failed to accomplish a single one of the strategic operational objectives he was tasked with.
He failed early on in the war in Croatia, where his units – despite their numerical and technological superiority – were unable to cut off and occupy at least part of the Dalmatian coast; he also failed to capture Sarajevo.
In the summer of 1995, Radovan Karadzic, his political superior, labeled him a “madman” following the defeat of the Krajina Serbs in Croatia and the expulsion of more than 200,000 refugees into the territory of Republika Srpska, and dismissed him from his post.
However, Karadzic had to reinstate him because, even then, the myth of him as a “hero” – fueled by television – had already taken hold.
It wasn’t until November 1996 that the Bosnian Serb president finally stripped him of his command. Yet no one dared to touch his general’s pension until 2005.
When a Fanatic Chants
Mladic repeatedly demonstrated that he was capable of waging war only against weaker opponents who lacked weapons and, in most cases, military training. He did not shy away from massacring civilians, and not only in Srebrenica in 1995.
In May and June 1995, he even took hostage hundreds of officers from the UN International Military Observer Mission and civilian UN mission staff. He used them as human shields, chaining them to bridges and military installations. This was later counted as one of his war crimes at The Hague.
Nevertheless, his artificially inflated media legend as a “heroic general” in Serbia persists to this day, as we saw during the international soccer match that took place last week in western Bohemia shortly after his death.
As Viktoria Plzen, the Czech team, played Red Star Belgrade, hundreds of fanatical hooligans from Belgrade – none of whom had likely experienced the war that ended in 1995 – chanted words of thanks to the convicted war criminal. It is a disgrace that the organizers and the police did nothing to intervene.
At least until 2005, the local army in Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated entity that makes up one part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, openly protected Mladic – despite an active international arrest warrant and a $5 million reward.
There was a well-known “incident” from the winter of 2004, when several British UN soldiers recognized him on an Olympic ski slope near Sarajevo, accompanied by his four armed bodyguards. They chose, however, to continue skiing on their own.
The wanted criminal also made appearances at the funerals of high-ranking officers of the Yugoslav Army, notably in 1996 when he appeared in uniform at the funeral of General Djordje Djukic, his subordinate during the war. That was in the presence of Veselin Sljivancanin, who by then had also been indicted by the UN tribunal and would serve 11 years for his role in the torture and killing of 260 men near Vukovar, Croatia in 1991.
Only procrastination and political considerations prevented Mladic’s arrest throughout his 16 years in “hiding.”
A Serbian Funeral with Honors
Amid speculation and “open secrets,” reports emerged throughout this period of behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Serbian government and Mladic regarding the possibility and conditions of his voluntary surrender to The Hague.
On the morning of 31 May 2011, the day of his extradition to The Hague, the ailing, embittered, and hate-filled old man was taken – at his own request – under an exceptionally heavy police escort to the Topcider Cemetery in Belgrade to say his final goodbyes at the grave of his only daughter, Ana.
She had committed suicide in 1994 after being unable to bear the news of her father’s involvement in the killing of civilians. She shot herself with his commemorative pistol, which he had received upon his graduation from the military academy. Now, he reportedly wants to be buried by her side.
Mladic never ceased to regard his extradition to The Hague as a betrayal of the “Serbian cause.” Most estimates of the number of victims of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina hover around 100,000, with some 2.5 million displaced.
He showed no interest in the testimony of nearly 600 witnesses presented in court, nor in the more than 10,000 documents proving his direct involvement in 106 individual crimes.
To this day, they hold no interest for the chauvinistic segment of Serbian politics and society. Serbian Minister of Justice Nenad Vujic, an expert on human rights and the rights of national minorities, stated last week that Ratko Mladic will be buried in Belgrade with the highest state and military honors.
Jan Urban is a journalist, former dissident, and co-founder of the Civic Forum movement. In the 1990s he was the publisher of the print predecessor of Transitions. He currently teaches at New York University’s Prague campus. This article was originally published in HlidaciPes.org. Reprinted with permission. Translated by Jeremy Druker.
