Mladic, Bosnian Serb Leader, Faces War Crimes Charges
Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, went on trial here on Wednesday for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from some of the bloodiest events of the Bosnian war in the 1990s, including the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo.
The indictment said Mr. Mladic willingly joined Serbian politicians in devising the brutal policy known as “ethnic cleansing” in 1992, during which soldiers and unruly militia swept through towns and villages of Bosnia, driving out tens of thousands of Muslim and Croat families to create lands for Serbs
At the height of the Bosnian campaign, forces under Mr. Mladic’s command controlled nearly three quarters of Bosnia.
Mr. Mladic, who was captured in May 2011, faces two counts of genocide — one for the ethnic cleansing campaign and a second for a massacre during the war’s climax, when Mr. Mladic’s forces overran a small contingent of United Nations peacekeepers in Srebrenica. Some 8,000 captive men and boys were killed over several days in July 1995 in what were portrayed as acts of vengeance for Serbian deaths at the hands of Muslims.