• Genocide and crimes against humanity, Mladic sentenced in The Hague for the Srebrenica massacre
  • The faces of a genocide. Dead, disappeared and survivors of Srebrenica

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by Lucia Goracci November 23, 2017 "The butcher in prison" , the newspaper Dnevni Avaz scans, full-page news and the mocking grin of the former Bosnian Serb commander; “Guilty Mladic” , is the more sober headline Oslobođenje, which causes the chief prosecutor in The Hague, Brammertz, to say: “heroes were the dead. And the survivors ” .

The next day Sarajevo wakes up to a historic sentence, warmed by an unusual sun that invites us to look forward. The martyr city has already done so. Those 1425 days strangled by Serbian militias over 20 years ago, are now a daily tour entitled Sarajevo under siege . The historic center, a fact prized over the centuries by the various communities, led by those Jews who fled from Spain, whose ancient writings, Muslim Sarajevo was able to save from the raids of the Nazis; in the rebuilt center, the shops alternate chinoiserie and old handicrafts, wools and the gracious oils of a local artist, Mersad Kuldija, in whose paintings shtetl and minarets are huddled in bizarre balance. Asian tourists photograph everything, but most of all women, these blue-eyed Barbie dolls and Islamic hijabs. If they raised them a little, their eyes elongated, they would be able to see the white carpets of the war cemeteries, unrolled on every hill.

Far away is Sarajevo under the siege , the bridge of Romeo and Juliet washed from its wounds, where he Serbian, she Muslim, were killed by the blind roulette of snipers. Just beyond another bridge, the one where Gavrilo Princip's irredentism killed the heir to the Austrian throne, condemning Europe to the great war. Too much history in these little Balkans, Churchill already said. Today's stories of Sarajevo's intellectuals tell the creeping Islamization, the citadels inside the city built by the Arabs of the Gulf, to inaccessible premises. Look ahead, but don't forget, this ancient and inclusive community, once upon a time. And he agrees: many, perhaps too many years have passed, but finally justice.

It's time to leave, parading along the snipers' avenue. Anonymous suburb, where yesterday the dead were buried in cellars. Woe to push, the living, the head out. 

For further information:  The story of the "Executioner of Srebrenica", who is Ratko Mladic