The Case Against Ratko Mladic
In a recent series of blog posts entitled "Mladic in Srebrenica," I examined the reported movements of the former Bosnian Serb military commander during the days immediately following the fall of the United Nations "safe area" in July 1995. Today, I will address the larger question of Mladic's responsibility for the murders of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys dumped in mass graves, as shown on the map above.
Mladic's defense lawyers have said they are planning to mount a two-tier defense. First, they will argue that the number of Bosnian Muslim victims has been wildly exaggerated. While they concede that there may have been some scattered "revenge killings" following the capture of the enclave, they claim that the overwhelming majority of the deaths were due to combat, or even Muslims fighting among themselves. Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic has employed a similar defense in his own trial, which recently moved into the Srebrenica phase.
The second pillar of the Mladic defense will be the claim that he left the Srebrenica area by the time the mass executions began, and was not himself present at any of the execution sites. His attorneys will argue that he did not order the executions and cannot be held responsible for isolated acts of revenge by forces under his overall command.
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Even if we give Mladic the benefit of the doubt about his physical presence at the mass execution sites, there remains a mountain of evidence suggesting that he was the primary initiator and organizer of Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. To summarize the most important points:
Because of the four paragraph rule, the meat of the author's case is at the link.
http://dobbs.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/20/the_case_against_ratko_mladic
Looks to me that when all is said and done, Mladic will indeed be found guilty.
