The charges against Ratko Mladic

The Hague - Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military leader captured in Serbia on Thursday, faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict.

The 69-year-old wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb army had been on the run since he was indicted by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1995.

He was originally named on the same indictment sheet as Bosnian Serb former political leader Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested in July 2008, but the cases have since been split.

The indictment against Mladic details his role the Bosnian war, the bloodiest of the conflicts in the Balkans following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which left more than 200,000 people dead.

The document details how Mladic went from being a commander in the Yugoslav army in 1991 to heading the staff of the Bosnian Serb army shortly after the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed their own republic inside Bosnia.

In particular the indictment highlights Mladic`s alleged responsibility for the siege of Sarajevo, the campaign of "ethnic cleansing" throughout Bosnia, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and the holding of dozens of UN peacekeepers hostage.

He is charged with being a member of a criminal enterprise whose objective was "the elimination or permanent removal, by force or other means, of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb inhabitants from large areas of Bosnia-Hercegovina through the commission of crimes".

Charges against Mladic include:

-- Two counts of genocide which focused on the treatment of Bosnian Muslims and specifically mentioned the establishment of camps and detention centres for them and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of nearly 8,000 men and boys.

Thousands of people were held in horrific living conditions in the camps run by Bosnian Serbs at the start of the war. In the Prijedor area alone more than 1,500 people died in the camps of Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm.

-- Six counts of war cimes, which included details of his role in a "protracted military campaign" in which Bosnian Serb forces under his control used artillery and mortars as well as snipers on civilians in Sarajevo.

-- Seven counts of crimes against humanity committed in various municipalities around Bosnia and related to persecution of Bosnian Muslims based on political, racial and religious grounds as well as cruel treatment, attacks on civilians and the taking of hostages.

Mladic is not only charged with having personally "planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of these crimes" but also for being responsible for the atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb troops subordinate to him which he failed to prevent or punish.

source : antaranews.com