One of Ratko Mladic's most senior commanders was in no doubt who was ultimately responsible for the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July of 1995, AP reported. «This chain of command originated with Mladic,» argued Radislav Krstic, the corps commander of the forces that controlled this part of eastern Bosnia, where the slaughter unfolded. Through much of the 16 years Mladic was in hiding, evidence has been accumulating in the case files of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal of his key role in genocidal crimes in Bosnia, as one after another of his subordinates were sent to prison. In one sense, Mladic has already been tried by proxy. His name figures large in the testimony and documents at the trials of Bosnian Serb army officers, including Krstic and three others who have been convicted of genocide-related charges for the mass killings in eastern Bosnia. The slaughter in Srebrenica was of such a scale that tribunal judges drop legal niceties in describing it. As one verdict put it, the weeklong bloodbath were crimes «committed with a level of brutality and depravity not previously seen in Yugoslavia ... and are among the darkest days in modern European history.» The judgment in Krstic's 2004 appeal upheld the lower court's finding that «Mladic directed the operation.» The defense and prosecution «agreed that General Mladic was the main figure behind the killings.» Mladic and his political boss, Radovan Karadzic, repeatedly emerge as the two central figures in the conduct of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, leading the meetings at which military strategy was decided and giving the orders to carry out their ambition of «cleansing» areas of non-Serbs. Judging from the Krstic case and other trials, the evidence against Mladic, the overall Bosnian Serb army commander, appears overwhelming. But legal experts said it must be put to the test against Mladic's defense team, and they cautioned against inferring guilt from the convictions of his subordinates. At question for the court to decide is whether Mladic was ultimately responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deliberate massacre at the U.N.-declared safe zone. Srebrenica is the most serious incident of the war for which he stands accused. The lengthy list of charges also includes ordering the four-year-long siege of Sarajevo. In all, about 100,000 people were killed in the war. -- SPA
