He was born in Bosnia, but committed the worst massacre against Bosnian Muslims. The story of the “Butcher of the Balkans” Ratko Mladic.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment after he lived free for 16 years after committing these massacres.

Although this man was one of the most prominent Serbian military leaders, who committed war crimes and brutal massacres, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the crimes he committed against Muslims in Bosnia. His defence lawyers called for an appeal, but the sentence was eventually handed down to life imprisonment. Let’s take a look at the story of Ratko Mladic, that Serbian leader who committed massive massacres in Bosnia, the most famous of which was the massacre of Srebrenica, which killed 8,372 unarmed Muslims, which made him win the title of “Butcher of the Balkans.”

The beginning.. from disintegrated Yugoslavia

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established after the Allied victory in World War II. It was established in the form of a federation consisting of 6 different republics, ethnically and historically. Perhaps the most prominent of these distinct groups is Bosnia. They are Muslims, but they are in a Christian environment that is different from them, ethnically and identifiably as well as historically and politically.
With the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which began in 1991 and finally ended in 1992, many wars called “Balkan Wars” broke out, from which a man like Ratko Mladic, who was nicknamed “The Butcher of the Balkans”, emerged.

The largest and most powerful party to these wars was Serbia, as it was the largest country that believed that it could impose its control over the rest of the different republics, ethnically, identifiably, and politically with it.

During this ugly war, the Bosnian Muslims (Bosnians) were the most prominent victims, as they did not have a strong political bloc such as the Serbs or Croats, for example. And when they wanted to establish their own state, which had existed since ancient times, the Serbs refused.
At first the Serbs entered an open war with the Croats, but they were well armed and were able to balance the war with the Serbs. During all these wars, the Serbs were moving according to their strategy of retaking “Greater Serbia”, which is practically the successor to the Republic of Yugoslavia.
But Slobodan Milosevic, who was a leader of the Serbs as well as a herald of the idea of ​​“Greater Serbia” did not give the other nationalities any hope of an equal existence for Serbs in that “Greater Serbia”.
In any case, the attempts of “Greater Serbia” failed, and Slobodan Milosevic himself was tried by the International Tribunal in The Hague, and he was found dead in his cell in 2001. But on the way to his trial, the Serbs under his leadership committed human massacres, the most prominent of which were those led by Ratko Mladic.

The beginning of Ratko Mladic

In the former Yugoslavia, all citizens had similar conditions. Although the founder of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, was a Croatian, the state remained one under the shadow of communism, and as soon as Tito died in 1980, the state he founded began to disintegrate, and the Serbs were the strongest in this equation.

Historically, the Serbs were a major power in the Balkans before the Ottomans eliminated them in a series of battles. This was evident in Slobodan Milosevic’s 1989 sermon marking the 600th anniversary of the war between the Serbs and the Turks.

In communist Yugoslavia, Ratko Mladic graduated from the Military Infantry Academy in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, and then entered the Military Staff College, and became an officer in the Yugoslav army.
With the rise of Serbian shares after the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1992, his star also rose as a Serbian leader who, along with other Serbian leaders, sought to establish a “Greater Serbia.” Ratko Mladic was a field commander who led the battles on the ground himself.

With the beginnings of the Serbian war against Croatia in 1991, Ratko Mladic served in an area near western Croatia, which declared its independence, and with it the war began. The most prominent of his actions in this war was the bombing of Croatian cities with tanks, as he committed massacres against Croats as well.

In April 1992, he was appointed commander of the Second Army in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. In Bosnia, he led a siege on the capital, Sarajevo, that lasted 1425, or nearly 4 years, making it the longest siege in the modern history of Europe.

Srebrenica massacre. A scandal for humanity

As if the massacres he committed against the Croats, and then his suffocating siege on the Bosnian capital, qualified him to advance in the Serbian army more, he was appointed commander of the so-called “Bosnian Serb Army.” Ratko Mladic was Serbian in terms of ethnicity, but he was also born in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

Thus, with the development of events, he became the commander of the Bosnian Serb army. In Bosnia, there are Serbs, as in Serbia, the Bosnians. Thus, Serbia recruited the Bosnian Serbs for its benefit in the war.

During his leadership of these forces, he committed many systematic massacres. In the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, snipers surrounded some places to kill civilians, and the capital was bombed with bombs and missiles, killing about 10,000 civilians, including 1,601 children who were killed while playing only in front of their homes and in their schools. In all, Ratko Mladic’s crimes against Bosnian Muslims included about 15 municipalities within Bosnia, but the most prominent and most horrific of those massacres was the Srebrenica massacre.

With the development of the war, the Srebrenica region became an enclave isolated from the territories controlled by the Serbs. And because it is isolated from the Serb-controlled areas, the Bosnians flocked to it from all the Bosnian lands, and thus the city was crowded with Bosnians displaced from their destroyed areas.

The Serbs besieged Srebrenica from all sides, and with the siege, food, supplies, water and necessary medical supplies were reduced.

In April of 1993, the United Nations intervened when it declared the Srebrenica region a safe area of ​​the United Nations, and sent international forces to maintain it as a safe area. The United Nations asked the Bosnian volunteers to surrender their weapons, after the Bosnians surrendered their weapons, the Serb attacks stopped, but the siege remained in place on them.

But the Serbs closed the only outlet through which the Bosnians could enter food, water and necessary medical supplies. In 1995 Ratko Mladic led a bloody attack on defenceless Bosnian civilians.
Before that, Ratko Mladic entered the Srebrenica region with media cameras reassuring the Bosnian civilians, and as soon as the media came out, the Serbian plan to exterminate the Bosnian Muslims began, led by Ratko Mladic.

The Serbian forces began shelling Srebrenica with artillery and heavy missiles over a period of 5 days.
On the sixth day, the Serbs transferred the Bosnian women to another area, and then gathered the boys from the age of 14 and the men over the age of seventy, they gathered them to “investigate them for war crimes.”

But the truth is that they took the men to kill them, while raping a large number of women, including elderly women over seventy, and they cut open the stomachs of pregnant women, killed babies, and other atrocities.

This massacre is one of the worst massacres in modern history, indeed in human history, with a total of 8,372 victims, all of whom were buried in mass graves.

As for the Dutch peacekeeping forces, the Serbian forces attacked them before committing the massacre and detained 30 Dutch soldiers, and when the Dutch battalion requested support from NATO, NATO planes bombed Serbian tanks, but the Serbs threatened to kill the detained 30 Dutch soldiers. Air strikes ceased, Ratko Mladic handed over all peacekeeping observation posts and guard posts from Dutch forces, and so after the UN made Bosnian volunteers lay down their arms left them to face Serb massacre.
The Bosnians even went by the thousands to the United Nations base for shelter, and the Dutch soldiers handed them over to the Serb forces.

Living freely for 16 years and then imprisonment.. Ratko Mladic in the dock

After all these massacres, Ratko Mladic lived freely for 16 years, where he lived as usual, despite being accused by the International Tribunal in The Hague of war crimes charges. It is said that he was living completely freely between Serbia and Russia, but he was arrested in 2011, north of the Serbian capital Belgrade, when he was preparing for a walk in the park.

The first indictment against Ratko Mladic was in 1995, when it was brought to the International Criminal Court, and the list included many crimes, in addition to the crime of genocide. His trial lasted 530 days, and in November 2017, Ratko Mladic was convicted on 10 of the 11 charges and sentenced to life imprisonment, as the International Tribunal does not carry the death penalty. He is still in prison, and defense attorneys are seeking to appeal the court’s ruling, while victims’ attorneys are seeking to include another case that the court has acquitted.