July 24, 2008

Ratko Mladic heads most-wanted list
Ratko Mladic had a ’total disregard for the rules of war’

Adam LeBor, Central Europe Correspondent
The arrest of Radovan Karadzic is the strongest signal yet that the
net is steadily closing in on his military commander, the former
General Ratko Mladic.

Mr Mladic, 65, is now the UN war crimes tribunal's most wanted
fugitive. He is charged, alongside Dr Karadzic, with war crimes and
genocide including the siege of Sarajevo, “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia
and the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys after the fall of
Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, in July 1995.

Squat, bull-necked and radiating belligerence and a messianic belief
in the righteousness of his actions, Mr Mladic preferred a muddy
trench on the front lines to hobnobbing with diplomats. He and Dr
Karadzic loathed each other but were locked in a dark embrace. He
viewed Dr Karadzic as a profiteer, growing fat on the Serbs'
suffering. Dr Karadzic claimed that Mr Mladic had lost his mind on the
front lines.

Both men shared an utter lack of compassion where non-Serbs were
concerned and a total disregard for the rules of war. Civilians,
including women and children, were the deliberate target of both
artillery and snipers. In 1993 during the siege of Srebrenica, the
general ordered his commanders shelling the Muslim enclave to “hit the
raw meat”.

Until the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000 Mr Mladic was
seen regularly in Belgrade. He attended football matches and dined
with his army friends in select restaurants, where they ate feasts of
fatty lamb washed down with copious, powerful plum brandy. He spent
much time at the grave of his daughter Ana, a medical student in
Belgrade who committed suicide in March, 1994, at the age of 23.

Ratko Mladic was born on March 12, 1943, in Bozinovici, Bosnia. His
parents were both partisans who fought with Tito. His father, Nedja,
was killed on his son's second birthday fighting the Croats. He went
to school on the outskirts of Belgrade before graduating from a
military academy in 1965. He rose rapidly up the ranks of the Yugoslav
army (JNA), serving in Macedonia and Kosovo before being sent to
Croatia in June 1991 after it declared independence from Yugoslavia.

Mr Mladic was a key figure in transforming the JNA from a defender of
the multinational state into becoming the means of its destruction.
This was achieved through the Vojna Linija, or “Military Line”, a
group of Serb army officers loyal to Mr Milosevic, who saw that
Yugoslavia was about to collapse and aimed to annex much of Croatia
and Bosnia to Serbia. Their plan was known as “Ram” or “frame”, and
was the blueprint for the Greater Serbia project.