War crimes charges against Mladic
Topics: From the Wires, News
FILE In this Monday, June 22, 1992 file photo a wounded Sarajevo resident sits in shock next to two other seriously wounded civilians moments after one of several mortar shells landed in central Sarajevo. The indictment against Ratko Mladic, who went on trial Wednesday May 16, 2012 at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands, holds the former Bosnian Serb army commander "individually criminally responsible for planning, instigating, ordering and/or aiding and abetting the crimes charged in this indictment." Mladic is charged with 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war. Between May 1992 and November 1995 Mladic participated in a campaign of sniping and shelling of Bosnia's capital Sarajevo, the primary purpose of which was to spread terror among the civilian population.(AP Photo/Santiago Lyon)(Credit: Associated Press)The indictment against Ratko Mladic — who went on trial Wednesday at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands — holds the former Bosnian Serb army commander “individually criminally responsible for planning, instigating, ordering and/or aiding and abetting the crimes charged in this indictment.” Mladic is charged with 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war. The counts below detail the atrocities during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war that Mladic is accused of commanding.
COUNT 1: GENOCIDE
Ratko Mladic, along with other former Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders is accused of “destroying” entire groups of Muslim and Croat communities in various parts of Bosnia. These include the 3-year relentless shelling of the capital, Sarajevo, and several other small towns such as Foca, where Serbs were particularly brutal, executing local Muslims and throwing them into a river. Some of the remains were only found last year.
COUNT 2: GENOCIDE
This count of genocide refers to the mass killing of over 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica, in July 1995, which is Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II. Mladic’s troops executed almost the entire Srebrenica male population in a few days, burying them later in mass graves around the town. Many were later found with their hands tied behind their back and identification of the remains is still ongoing.
COUNT 3: PERSECUTIONS
The count relates to the persecution on political and religious grounds against Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats in the Serb-controlled towns like Banja Luka, in western Bosnia, or Bijeljina in the east. Non-Serbs in these and other towns were evicted from their homes by Serb troops, held in prison camps, tortured, raped and killed. Images or skinny, naked prisoners from the camps in western Bosnia in 1992-93 reminded the world of the Nazi-era camps.
COUNTS 4, 5 and 6: EXTERMINATION, MURDER
These counts of the indictment refer to the widespread killings of non-Serbs that took place in the territories under the Bosnian Serb control, but also on the brutal attacks on the capital, Sarajevo, which prosecutors say were designed to “spread terror.” Mladic’s troops from 1992-95 were constantly sniping and shelling Sarajevo, killing thousands of civilians, the longest siege of a capital city since WWII.
COUNTS 7 AND 8: DEPORTATION, INHUMANE ACTS




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