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Guim Bonaventura's List: Bosnia
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Jun 16, 11
Mladic's Long Shadow
Bosnian Serb ex-military commander Ratko Mladic appearing before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague
June 16, 2011
By Gordana Knezevic
The day before his extradition to The Hague to face charges of war crimes and genocide, Ratko Mladic requested permission from the Serbian authorities to visit the grave of his daughter Ana.
She had committed suicide in 1994 at the height of the Bosnian conflict that had earned her father worldwide notoriety. Mladic wouldn’t take no for an answer: let me go, or bring her coffin to my cell was the message to his captors.
The final image of himself that Mladic wanted to project to the Serbian public was that of a grieving father desperate to pay homage to the memory of a beloved daughter.
It was meant to generate some empathy for a man accused of directing the worst massacres committed in Europe since World War II.
But the tone and manner in which he phrased his request was a flashback to the old Mladic, the bullish wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, remembered with terror and rage by the survivors of Srebrenica, Sarajevo, and many other places in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Mladic's Daughter Also A Victim Of His Mania
Ana, a medical student at the time, was distraught over the war in Bosnia and her father's role in the torture and killing of civilians, according to reports in some opposition media not loyal to the Milosevic regime.
Her death is inseparable from thousands of others who died during those years (1992-95), victims of a concerted campaign against Bosnia's civilian (and above all, Muslim) population.
She, too, was a victim of her father's mania. Yet Mladic did not request a visit to the gravesites of Sarajevo or Srebrenica, where unmarked mass graves are still being identified and catalogued, 16 years later.
No trace of remorse or sorrow was visible on his face, haggard and significantly paler than the last time he appeared on our TV screens. Facing the cameras in The Hague courtroom, Mladic was remin-
the tone and manner in which he phrased his request was a flashback to the old Mladic, the bullish wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, remembered with terror and rage by the survivors of Srebrenica, Sarajevo, and many other places
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Djindjic believed that cooperating with The Hague was not only a formal obligation, but that it was in his country's best interests to break with its violent past, and its culture of criminal impunity
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mig centenar de catalans que van combatre contra els serbis, voluntàriament, durant la guerra de Croàcia que va començar el 1991.
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Les motivacions d'aquest grup de catalans eren moltes, però en cap cas econòmiques.
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