On June 8, 2021, the Mechanism for International Criminal Courts (MTPI) confirmed that the former Commander-in-Chief of the Bosnian Serb Republic (VRS) Army – General Ratko Mladic – should be sentenced to life imprisonment for “atrocious war crimes and crimes against human kind”.
The MTPI’s verdict (in The Hague – Netherlands) put an end to the legal process against what became known as “the butcher of the Balkans”, because the decisions of this judicial body — which replaced the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (TPIJ) after its closure in 2017 — are not subject to appeal.
Ratko Mladic, now 79, was blamed for the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, where VRS forces under his command allegedly executed about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians.
It is true that history is told by the victors, and the Serbs lost that war; however, regardless of the reasons General Mladic may have had for acting as he did in Srebrenica, a commander is always responsible for the performance of his forces, and this earned him conviction for four war crimes and five crimes against humanity. Srebrenica was considered the biggest bloodbath in Europe after World War II, and Mladic’s hands are stained with that blood.
War transforms people and emphasizes everything that is bad in human kind. However, a career officer; a Commander; has the obligation to think beyond the range of his cannons. His forces owe him loyalty, but “he” has a guardianship duty to his men and women in arms: “the duty of custodian”. Mladic failed when he led the Serbs in an autistic way, not thinking about the consequences that would follow for his forces.
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