Ratko Mladic, the Balkan Butcher: "My time has only just begun"

• Justice: Ratko Mladic, sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity
• Balkans - Where has Mladic been for the last 16 years?

It was a strange court session. It has been 25 years since the Srebrenica genocide and the Justice has yet to debate what that massacre was, because even war criminals have what they denied their victims: a fair trial until all avenues are exhausted. It is the last chance for Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic to escape justice . For the Prosecutor's Office, on the other hand, it is the occasion to obtain that the events that occurred between 1992 and 1995 are legally classified as "genocide" not only in Srebrenica but in five other municipalities, such as the Bosnian Serb Prijedor.

The coronavirus prevented the families of the victims from witnessing it, who had not missed a single session of the trial of the war criminals who are tried in The Hague for the barbarities committed during the Balkan War ( 1991-2001).

" My moment has only just begun . People will hear what Ratko Mladic has to say. I am alive and well, and I will continue to live as long as our people continue to exist, and when his accusation has ended up in the trash", were the last words from the accused to the judges of the remainder of the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Mladic, who presented himself as "a victim of NATO" , said he had a "very, very low opinion" of this Court, which would be nothing more than "the youngest daughter of the Western alliance" that, with its sentences, it defends " the interests of Holland and the Dutch blue helmets, "he said. "I have been a professional soldier all my life and I worked both in peacetime and in war in defense of my country, destroyed by NATO. Ratko Mladic did not start the war, he did not elaborate any plan," the accused stressed.

With his hand on his chest, the former military man asked for 31 minutes to read his closing speech of the appeal trial , at least for his role of having been "an eyewitness" of the events, but the judges have only granted him ten minutes , in which he wanted to answer "the blonde woman who seems to have swallowed a snake or the entire NATO accusation" against him, he said, referring to the prosecutor, Laurel Baig, who moments before had accused him of genocidal and war criminal , words "viperine and diabolical" in Mladic's vision. "I am nothing of the kind that you have called me. Is Ratko Mladic guilty of not letting our enemies throw Serbian children into the wells?" "Fate put me in the role of defending my country from you, from the Western powers. You destroyed it with the help of the Vatican," he told the prosecutor.

At 78 years old, dressed in a black suit, blue tie and white shirt, he disgusted the mask as soon as he sat in front of the screen where the broadcast of the session continues live. Sometimes he looks like he has never broken a plate in his life, but it didn't take long for him to bring out some arrogance, smiling with pride when the Prosecutor's Office spoke of the crimes committed. Gray-haired, angry eyes, gesturing from time to time or raising his finger to deny and show his disagreement with the list of crimes with which he is related, Mladic tried to keep the forms, although it was not always easy.

He even complained about how long the breaks are. Mladic is not to be waiting: his health is deteriorating, according to his lawyers. He has been very ill , the session scheduled for March had to be canceled to operate on the colon, he has no energy left and, at times, his memory fails, so much so that his Defense team believes that he is not trained, perhaps not even to give the speech he gave to close the session. The prison doctors do not agree very much, they see it well enough, so as not to delay justice any more and to be able to continue with the appeal of a 2017 verdict, which sentences him to life imprisonment for genocide of more than 8,000 men and Muslim children in Srebrenica and other war crimes. Verdict that the Prosecutor's Office asked to maintain, while his lawyers seek acquittal or a repeat of the entire trial.

The so-called "butcher of the Balkans" committed his first international crimes in 1992. He was an unknown officer, until the war began, in which he served as the military commander of the Bosnian Serb forces . He was officially charged in 1996 with war crimes and genocide, but it was not until 2011 that the Serbian authorities captured him and extradited him to The Hague, where the ICTY headquarters was still open, which officially closed its doors in 2017. Residual functions of that Court, like the appeal to life imprisonment presented by Mladic, is managed by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, also in The Hague.

The ICTY also ruled that Mladic was responsible for a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnians and Croats, and for numerous killings against civilians in Sarajevo during the three-year and seven-month siege of that city, in his plan to create a "Great Serbia "in parts of the former Yugoslavia. Mladic and his men waged a relentless campaign against the then weaker Bosnian and Croatian forces , coming to control three-quarters of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Prosecutor's Office has exposed chilling details about the murders, torture, rapes and other crimes committed in that war . "I want my enemies, and there are many of them, to die while I am still living," Mladic said eight years ago, the first time he sat on the dock in The Hague. Today those who fear that he will die without having his life sentence confirmed are the victims he frightened and left orphans or widows in the nineties. The final sentence will have to wait for 2021.

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