Convicted War Criminal Mladić Faces His Final Days
A note to readers: My apologies for having been absent for a few months. I was fully occupied with finishing my latest book, with co-author Mark S. Ellis, entitled “The Story of Modern International Justice, 1993-2025” (Springer). We illuminate the major judicial opinions of thirteen international tribunals and courts and how they advanced international law during the last three decades. I will alert you to its publication soon.
Ratko Mladić, the chief commander of Bosnian Serb forces during the Balkans War of the early 1990’s, is dying. The latest report about this notorious war criminal’s health a few weeks ago describes him being on his deathbed in the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague. Recently, Mladić’s lawyers sought to have him released on humanitarian grounds for his final days. The President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Judge Graciela Gatti Santana, indeed confirmed that, “Mladić is approaching the end of his life.” But she determined in a May 14 ruling that, “Mladić’s continued imprisonment has not become incompatible with international standards of detention aimed at ensuring humane treatment. His continued presence in the prison hospital and under the [United Nations Detention Unit]’s supervision is neither inhumane, nor an affront to his dignity. Remaining there does not pose threats to his well-being that might otherwise be accommodated in a hospital setting, for example, in Serbia.”
Mladić, 84 years old, may still live long enough to be reminded in a few weeks of the 31st anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, where an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were slaughtered over a several-day period by Mladić’s forces. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found Mladić guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the Srebrenica genocide and sentenced him to life imprisonment on 22 November 2017, a judgment upheld on appeal on 8 June 2021. Mladić also was found guilty of orchestrating a multitude of war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilian populations and taking U.N. peacekeepers hostage. His crimes included ethnic cleansing of six municipalities in northern Bosnia in 1992 and the terror siege of Sarajevo from April 1992 to February 1996.
Mladić’s trial in The Hague spanned from May 2012 to December 2016. Of the 591 witnesses, 377 appeared in the courtroom to deliver deeply personal and wrenching testimony of atrocity crimes that often led Mladić to disrupt the trial, prompting the judge to order him removed from the courtroom.
Once when I visited the trial, I was the only spectator in the courtroom gallery that day. As the first American war crimes ambassador, I had helped facilitate in Washington in March 2000 a $5 million bounty for anyone providing credible information that would lead to the arrest of Mladić (as well as Slobodan Milošević or Radovan Karadžić). Given my own efforts to assist the Yugoslav Tribunal leading to his indictment and to track him for arrest thereafter, which finally occurred in Serbia on 26 May 2011, Mladić may have recognized me. He frequently tilted his head towards me and stared during that day’s session. I just stared back through the glass wall, very satisfied that he was confronting justice at long last. I viewed his trial antics, including Mladić aggressively leaning towards his defense counsel and speaking so loudly that witnesses could hear him (which in court can intimidate a witness), sneering at the judge, and seemingly oblivious to the decorum of a trial proceeding. He never repented for his deeds.
When Mladić reaches his final day, expect a flood of obituaries in the media that describe his role in the atrocity crimes that consumed Bosnia for so many years. I highly doubt there will be anything written outside the region that redeems his soul. Perhaps Mladić, in the short time he has left, will finally acknowledge the inhumanity of his actions and confess his responsibility for the genocide and other atrocity crimes. But that will be unlikely. (Although in November 2024, former Bosnian Serb army general Radislav Krstić, who was convicted of aiding and abetting the genocide at Srebrenica and is serving a 35-year sentence, handwrote a letter in which he finally admitted to facilitating genocide, “an unimaginable and unforgivable crime.”)
Upon Mladić’s death, there doubtless will be nationalist hero worship of him along with resurgence of genocide denial in Serbia and within the Bosnian Serb sector of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has long been a virulent denier of the Srebrenica genocide and he will likely fan those flames again. The Mothers of Srebrenica, who keep the memory of the genocide alive, will voice their strong rebuttal to any genocide denial. Governments throughout the world should remind everyone of the historical facts, as validated by international judges, of what Mladić commanded, particularly at Srebrenica.