Mladic Trial May Hold Key to Bosnian War
The recently arrested former commander of the Bosnian Serb military is about to face some of the heaviest charges ever issued by the Hague war crimes tribunal.
And if the Prosecution presents new evidence in support of the charges against Ratko Mladic, gaps in our knowledge of the Bosnian war may finally be filled, including those relating to the 1995 massacre of over 7,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia.
Other trials held in The Hague have already revealed the extent of the evidence that the Prosecutor’s office has gathered against him over the past 16 years.
Ironically, it was Mladic’s long period in hiding that gave the prosecutors time to build a stronger case than when the initial indictment was first confirmed in 1995.
Mladic is accused of committing every crime on the Hague’s books, from genocide and complicity in genocide to crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war.
The 14-page indictment reads like a condensed history of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The time and geographical scope of the crimes covered by the indictment encompass the whole duration of the war and almost all of the republic’s territory.
They cover the 1992 campaigns of ethnic cleansing in east and northwest Bosnia and the establishment of concentration camps there, the three-year siege of Sarajevo, the taking of UN hostages in 1995 during NATO air strikes and the final, most gruesome, episode of the war, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
Mladic is alleged to have been a member of a “joint criminal
enterprise” whose aim was “the removal, by force or other means, of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat or other non-Serb inhabitants from large areas of Bosnia”.
The indictment states that this was done by “attacking and destroying non-Serb towns and villages; killing and terrorising the non-Serb inhabitants, and submitting them to cruel and inhumane treatment and conditions; using non-Serbs for forced labour, including at front lines, and as human shields; deporting, and permanently removing
non-Serbs who did not subjugate themselves to Serb authorities.”
His alleged crimes also include “a protracted military campaign of artillery and mortar shelling and sniping into civilian areas of Sarajevo” as well as “the campaign of persecutions, which included acts of genocide” in Srebrenica.
The Srebrenica campaign, the indictment adds, included “capturing, detaining, summarily executing and burying thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica” as well as “an organised and comprehensive operation designed to conceal the execution campaign”.
Prosecutors allege that the commander of Bosnian Serb forces from May 1992 until December 1996 was guilty of personally “planning, instigating and ordering” these crimes. He “knowingly and willfully participated” in this criminal enterprise, “while sharing the intent” of other participants, the indictment says.
Mladic is accused further of failing to prevent and punish the crimes of his subordinates, as he exercised “de jure and de facto command and control over the Bosnian Serb forces that participated in the crimes alleged in this indictment”.
He “knew or had reason to know that all crimes alleged in this indictment were about to be committed or had been committed by his subordinates and he failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or punish the perpetrators”.
Much of the evidence since gathered against him was not available in 1995, while other cases have since established a legal base that may make it easier for the tribunal to deliver a guilty verdict.
Trials of guards and commanders in the Bosnian Serb concentration camps in northwest Bosnia have yielded a large amount of evidence of the Bosnian Serb army’s involvement in these operations. Some of this is likely to be used in the Mladic trial.
Other trials, such as that of Radoslav Brdjanin, the former
Serb leader in northwest Bosnia, or that of his party colleague, Miroslav Deronjic, in eastern Bosnia, have expanded the tribunal’s knowledge of the army’s involvement in crimes.
The ongoing case against the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic may shed more light on the command chain and power relations within the Bosnian Serb leadership, while the case against the former head of Serbia’s state security, Jovica Stanisic, could help further clarify the extent of Serbia’s involvement in the war and the crimes of which Mladic is accused.
In terms of extending both the factual and the legal basis for the prospective trail, cases against two of Mladic’s subordinates, the Romanija Corps commander, Stanislav Galic, and the Drina Corps commander, Radislav Krstic, have been especially significant.
The two men feature in Mladic’s indictment as members of the same joint criminal enterprise.
Although the decisions of other tribunal chambers cannot bind Mladic’s judges, tribunal practice has been for judges to take directly linked sentences into consideration.
The Galic trial established that “a campaign of sniping and shelling against civilians” in Sarajevo existed throughout the Bosnian war and found him guilty of individual criminal responsibility.
From spring 1992 until winter 1995 Galic’s forces kept the Bosnian capital under siege, sniping at and shelling the city, killing thousands of civilians.
“Sarajevo was not a city where occasional random acts of violence against civilians occurred or where living conditions were simply hard,” Galic’s judges concluded in December 2003.
“Hundreds of men, women, children, and elderly people were killed and thousands were wounded and more generally terrorized,” they said.
They added: “General Galic not only made little effort to distinguish civilian from military objectives but willingly oversaw the targeting of civilians in Sarajevo. The crimes committed by his troops (or at least a high proportion of these) would not have been committed without his assent.”
As Corps commander, Galic was directly subordinate to Mladic.
But the real breakthrough in recent years has been in the tribunal’s knowledge about the Srebrenica massacre.
In the week after Bosnian Serbs under Mladic overran the UN-protected enclave in July 1995, they executed over 7,000 Bosniak men and boys. Mladic personally oversaw the bigger part of this campaign.
In April 2005, in the case against Radislav Krstic, the Appeals Chamber established that the Srebrenica events legally constituted genocide – the first case to be so defined in Europe since the end of the Second World War.
Several tribunal cases related to Srebrenica have revealed a great deal of new evidence about this crime. So have the plea agreements of two high-ranking Bosnian Serb officers, Dragan Obrenovic and Momir Nikolic.
These provided valuable insight into the mechanics of the massacre (although Nikolic’s reliability as a witness was challenged when it became clear that not all the evidence he gave the prosecutors in his plea negotiations was true). Obrenovic, then deputy commander of Zvornik brigade, provided the closest evidence of a direct link between Mladic and the executions.
In his plea agreement, Obrenovic said the orders to execute the Srebrenica prisoners came from Mladic, though another officer transmitted them – Drago Nikolic.
The decision of the Appeals Chamber, establishing that the Srebrenica events constituted genocide, provides a legal frame of reference that could make it very hard for Mladic to fight genocide charges.
It occurred after the chamber had delivered a ruling on Radislav Krstic, commander of the Drina Corps.
While the Chamber re-qualified Krstic’s responsibility in Srebrenica from genocide to “aiding and abetting” genocide, the judges noted that the evidence presented in his case “strongly suggested that the criminal activity was being directed by some members of the [Bosnian Serb army] main staff under the direction of general Mladic”.
The trial of the “Srebrenica seven” that ended in mid 2010- Vujadin Popovic, Ljubisa Beara, Drago Nikolic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Radivoje Miletic, Milan Gvero and Vinko Pandurevic – further strengthened the evidence base confirming the existence of genocidal intent in the highest circles of the Bosnian Serb Army leadership.
One of the accused, Ljubisa Beara, was identified as a person not only aware of this intent but fully sharing it. Beara was one of Mladic’s closest collaborators at the time.
Puzzles still remain over when and how the decision to execute thousands Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica was made and by whom, however.
The hope is that this trial, one of the most crucial ever held in the history of the Hague tribunal, will finally answer those questions.
Ana Uzelac has contributed to BIRN’s coverage of the ICTY since 2004.
