Top war crimes suspect (Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko) Mladic arrested in Serbia

Yahoo ^ | 5/26/11 | Aleksandar Vasovic - Reuters

[NormsRevenge]

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic was arrested in Serbia Thursday after years on the run from international genocide charges, opening the way for the once-pariah state to approach the European mainstream.

Mladic, accused of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a brutal 43-month siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-5 war, was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said.

"Mladic was handcuffed and whisked away," said the official, who said he been cooperative during the arrest. The formerly burly and widely-feared general was not disguised but had false identity papers and looked haggard and much older, he said.

"Hardly anyone could recognize him."

A friend of the Mladic family said he had been put on a plane to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, but Serbia said he was still in its custody.

"On behalf of the Republic of Serbia I can announce the arrest of Ratko Mladic. The extradition process is under way," Serbian President Boris Tadic told reporters in Belgrade just hours before a visit by a top official of the European Union, which told Serbia it must arrest Mladic before it could join.

Tadic confirmed Mladic, 69, had been detained in Serbia, which had long said it could not find a man who is still seen as a hero by many Serbs and whose Bosnian Serb Army was armed and funded by the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

"This removes a heavy burden from Serbia and closes a page of our unfortunate history," Tadic said.

[NormsRevenge]

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (R) and his war-time commander Ratko Mladic talk to each other on Vlasic mountain, in the Dinaric Alps, in this 1995 file photo. Serbia has arrested Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic who is wanted by an international court on genocide charges, a family friend said on Thursday. "He is in the headquarters of BIA," the person said, referring to the Serbian intelligence agency. "He was arrested in Serbia." An interior ministry official said earlier police had arrested someone thought to be Mladic and were checking his identity. REUTERS/Ranko Cukovic/Files

[NormsRevenge]

File picture shows a Bosnian Muslim woman, a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre, read the names of Muslims killed in the former U.N. safe zone of Srebrenica as she visits a memorial in Potocari June 16, 2008. Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic, whose long evasion of arrest on genocide charges has blocked Serbia's progress towards the European Union, was arrested in Serbia, a family friend said on May 26, 2011. Picture taken June 16, 2008. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

[ClearCase_guy]

There were no "good guys" in that war. Everyone did bad things to one side or another. Mladic mostly focused on killing Muslims. That's why he's considered to be especially evil and guilty of war crimes.

War crimes are what the winning side accuses the losing side of doing.
No one should have the slightest doubt that if Japan had won WWII, then Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been considered war crimes. The Japanese-American relocation camps would have been considered war crimes.

I do not accept the designation of "war crime". Throughout all of history people engaged in war have done bad things. That's just the way it is.

[cripplecreek]

Trading hats with Wes Clark.

[Cicero]

Meantime, the Muzzie murderers have been handed Kosovo, and are still busy smuggling drugs and body parts.

This was a three-way war, with atrocities on all sides. But for some reason, only the Serbs are guilty. I guess that must be because they are Christians, and were our allies.

[Navy Patriot]

War crimes are what the winning side accuses the losing side of doing.

And eventually it comes full circle, the used-to-be winners lose big enough to be in the dock, accused and guilty of violating the same laws they made up to legitimize their taking of heads when victorious.

The moral: always win big or be dead before you lose big.

[Seruzawa]

I don’t acre what religion or what country or if he killed one person or 1,000. Execute the murderer.

[cripplecreek]

But for some reason, only the Serbs are guilty.

That makes some sense. The Serbian woman I was dating a few years back calls Mladic an animal in a whole menagerie of animals. She calls it the tragic nature of balkan wars, they all produce the worst possible kind of people. However she also says they produce the best possible people but they don't make headlines.

Unfortunately she also sees a mirror in our border situation. Years of inaction are making the situation worse.