Three years ago, when I was in Sarajevo, I remember a local person saying what he wanted most was the capture of 'the Rat and Special K'. These were the nicknames given to Ratko Mladic and his political master, Radovan Karadzic. At that time, there was a general feeling that either they were being protected or deep in hiding.
Now we know that neither was true.
Three years ago, when I was in Sarajevo, I remember a local person saying what he wanted most was the capture of 'the Rat and Special K'. These were the nicknames given to Ratko Mladic and his political master, Radovan Karadzic. At that time, there was a general feeling that either they were being protected or deep in hiding.
Now we know that neither was true.
Karadzic was hiding - but mainly behind an enormous beard. His location, downtown Belgrade, could hardly be called an effective hideout. Mladic may have been protected in his earlier years. But certainly when he was arrested earlier this year, the location was far from being secret. He was living in the modest, unprotected house of his cousin in a northern Serbian village.
November 2011 marks the 16th anniversary of Mladic's indictment for genocide in Srebrenica. He had already been indicted for the same charge for the murderous siege of Sarajevo. 2011 is the first year that the families of the victims of Srebrenica can see the man charged with killing their family members, finally sit in the dock.
Mladic, a man that even his wildly unpredictable master Karadzic had called a madman, does not accept any charges.
In this edition of NATO Review, we'll be looking at whether the arrest of Ratko Mladic can bring some closure to the families concerned, the countries involved and the region as a whole. We'll be talking to both Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs to see how they view this major development. And we are also republishing the videos made back in 2008 when Karadzic was arrested, to see what progress - if any - has been made since then.
One of the points raised in the video is that a genocide cannot be atoned for by jailing just one man. The events in and around Srebrenica in July 1995 involved hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers. But those soldiers were under the command and orders of one man. And bringing him to justice, even imperfect justice, is incalculably better than never having arrested him at all.
