Ratko Mladić

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Ratko Mladić
(Serbian: Ратко Младић)
March 12, 1942 (1942-03-12) (age 66)

Place of birth Božinovići, Independent State of Croatia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Allegiance Flag of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Flag of Republika Srpska Republika Srpska
Years of service 1965–1996
Rank Colonel General
Commands held 9th Corps, Yugoslav People's Army (JNA)
2nd Military District Headquarters, JNA
Army of Republika Srpska
Battles/wars Dalmatia
Bosnia

Ratko Mladić (Serbian: Ратко Младић, pronounced [râtkɔ mlǎːditɕ]), born March 12, 1942, was the Chief of Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Army) during the Bosnian War of 1992-1995.

Mladić was recognised as the top military general by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in connection with the 1992-1995 Siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of around 8,300 Bosniak Muslims on July 11, 1995 at Srebrenica.[1]

There is currently an outstanding international arrest warrant against Mladić following the Rule 61 of ICTY which concluded that there are reasonable grounds for believing that he has committed the crimes in question, including genocide.[2] The United States government has offered a $5 million reward for his and Radovan Karadžić's arrests. Karadžić was arrested in Belgrade on July 21, 2008.[3] On October 11, 2007, the Serbian government announced that €1 million would be rewarded for information which would lead to Mladić's capture and arrest.[4]

He is believed to be hiding in Serbia.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Mladić was born in the village of Božinovići located near the Jahorina mountain, southeast of Sarajevo, northeast of Kalinovik and west of Goražde ( 43°37′55″N, 18°42′50″E)[dubious – discuss]. The place was at the time a part of the short-lived Independent State of Croatia, or NDH, a puppet-state created after Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy invaded and dismembered the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941. Mladic's father, a military leader of the Bosnian Serbs, was killed in 1945 while leading a partisan attack on the home village of Ante Pavelic[5] (Pavelic was the head of the NDH and Ustasha, whose bloody strategy for dealing with Serbs in the newly-formed NDH was 'kill a third, expel a third, convert a third'.[6]). Mladic's fatherless upbringing has contributed to the growth of his ultra-nationalist ideology.[7]

[edit] Early military career

Mladić entered the Military Industry School in Zemun in 1961, then went on to the KOV Military Academy, and then Officers Academy, graduating at the top of his class with a grade of 9.57. Upon his graduation in 1965, his first post as an officer was in Skopje, where he was the youngest soldier in the unit which he commanded. Beginning as a second lieutenant, he proved himself to be a capable officer, first commanding a platoon, then a battalion, and then a brigade. In 1989 was promoted to head of the Education Department of the Third Military District of Skopje.[8]

[edit] Role in the Yugoslav wars

In June 1991, Mladić was promoted to Deputy Commander of the Pristina Corps in the tense Kosovo province, dominated by separatist ethnic Albanians. As the situation in Croatia rapidly devolved, he was almost immediately re-posted to Knin as a Commander of the 9th Corps of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), during fighting between the JNA and the newly-formed Croatian Army. On October 4, 1991, he was promoted to Major General. The JNA forces under his command participated in the Croatian War, notably during Operation Coastline 91 in an attempt to sever Dalmatia from the rest of Croatia, which failed. Among other things, Mladić helped Milan Martić's paramilitary take the village of Kijevo.

On April 24, 1992, Mladić was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel General. On May 2, 1992, one month after the Bosnian Republic's declaration of independence, Mladić and his generals, acting under orders from Belgrade, blockaded the city of Sarajevo, shutting off all traffic in and out of the city, as well as water and electricity. This began the four-year Siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. The city was bombarded with shells and random shooting from the guns of snipers. On May 9, 1992, he assumed the post of Chief of Staff/Deputy Commander of the Second Military District Headquarters of the JNA in Sarajevo. On 10 May 1992, Mladić assumed the command of the Second Military District Headquarters of the JNA.

On May 12, 1992, the separatist Bosnian Serb Parliament voted to create the VRS, or Army of Republika Srpska. At the same time, Mladić was appointed Commander of the Main Staff of the VRS, a position he held until December 1996. (In May 1992, after the withdrawal of JNA forces from Bosnia, the JNA Second Military District became the nucleus of the Main Staff of the VRS.) On June 24, 1994, he was promoted to the rank of Colonel General over the approximately 80,000 troops stationed in the area.

General Ratko Mladić (centre) arrives for UN-mediated talks at Sarajevo airport, June 1993. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev
General Ratko Mladić (centre) arrives for UN-mediated talks at Sarajevo airport, June 1993. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev

In July 1995, troops commanded by Mladić, harried by NATO air strikes intended to force compliance with a UN ultimatum to remove heavy weapons from the Sarajevo area, overran and occupied the UN safe areas of Srebrenica and Žepa. At Srebrenica over 40,000 Bosniaks who had sought safety there were expelled. An estimated 8,300 were executed, allegedly on Mladić's order.

On August 4, 1995, with a massive Croatian military force poised to attack the Serb-held Krajina region in central Croatia, Karadžić announced he was removing Mladić from his commandant post and assuming personal command of the VRS himself. Karadžić blamed Mladić for the loss of two key Serb towns in western Bosnia that had recently fallen to the Croats, and he used the loss of the towns as the excuse to announce his surprise command structure changes. Mladić was demoted to an "adviser". He refused to go quietly, claiming the support of both the Bosnian Serb military as well as the people. Karadžić countered by attempting to pull political rank as well as denouncing Mladić as a "madman," but Mladić's obvious popular support forced Karadžić to rescind his order on August 11.

On November 8, 1996, the President of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Biljana Plavšić, dismissed Mladić from his post. He continued to receive a pension until November 2005.[9]

[edit] Indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

On July 24, 1995, Mladić was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and numerous war crimes (including crimes relating to the alleged sniping campaign against civilians in Sarajevo). On November 16, 1995, the charges were expanded to include charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for the attack on the United Nations-declared safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995. Mladić is also responsible for the taking of hostages amongst UN peace-keeping personnel.

A fugitive from the ICTY, he is suspected to be hiding either in Serbia or in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska. Mladić was reportedly seen attending a football match between China and Yugoslavia in Belgrade in March 2000. He entered through a VIP entrance and sat in a private box surrounded by eight armed bodyguards. Some claim that he has been seen in a suburb of Moscow, and that he is "regularly" in Thessalonica and Athens, which has raised suspicions that numerous fake reports are sent to cover his trail. Some reports say he took refuge in his wartime bunker in Han Pijesak, not far from Sarajevo, or in Montenegro.[10] In early February 2006, portions of a Serbian military intelligence report were leaked to the Serbian Newspaper Politika which stated that Mladić had been hidden in Army of Republika Srpska and Yugoslav People's Army facilities up until June 1, 2002, when the National Assembly of Serbia passed a law mandating cooperation with the ICTY in The Hague. The then-Chief General of the Yugoslav Army Nebojša Pavković requested that Mladić vacate the facility where he was staying on the mountain Povlen, near Valjevo, after which the Serb military agencies claim to have lost all trace of the fugitive.

In November 2004 British defence officials conceded that military action was unlikely to be successful in bringing Mladić and other suspects to trial. Putting political pressure on Balkan governments would be more likely to succeed.

In June 2005 The Times newspaper alleged that Mladić had demanded $5 m (£2.75 m) "compensation" to be given to his family and bodyguards if he gave himself up to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

On February 21, 2006, Mladić was supposedly arrested in the Serbian capital Belgrade and was being transferred via the northeast Bosnian city of Tuzla to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.[11] The arrest was denied by the Serbian government. The government did not deny rumours of a planned negotiated surrender between Mladić and Serbian Special Forces. Romanian government and Serbian sources claimed on February 22, 2006 that Mladić was arrested in Romania, near Drobeta-Turnu Severin, close to the Serbian border by a joint Romanian-British special operation carried out by troops of those respective countries.[12]

On February 22, 2006, Chief U.N. Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte denied the rumours that Mladić had been arrested, claiming the rumours had "absolutely no basis whatsoever". She urged the Serbian government to find him without further delay, saying that Mladić was in reach of the Serbian authorities and had been in Serbia since 1998. She said failure to capture him would harm Serbia's bid to join the European Union. The May 1, 2006 deadline established by Carla Del Ponte for Serbia to hand over Mladić passed, resulting in suspended talks between Serbia and the EU.

[edit] Possible death

In June 2006 there were reports that Mladić recently suffered a third stroke and that he had low chances of survival. At the same time PR of Democratic Party of Serbia, Andrija Mladenović, raised the question of who would be responsible for the halt in EU negotiations if Mladić were to die. Some sources say that Mladić's appearance has changed as a result of age and poor health.[13]

[edit] Family

Mladić is married to Bosa Mladić, they have two children; son Darko and daughter Ana. Ana died on March 24, 1994, an apparent suicide. There were conflicting reports in various Serbian publications, saying her body was found in her blood-splattered bedroom, in a nearby park or in the woods near the Topcider cemetery, however, all agreed that she was killed with her father’s treasured pistol, the pistol Ratko Mladić had won as an award at the military school he attended as a young man. There are also conflicting opinions on the cause that drove her to take her own life. Some say that she was distraught after she read detailed accounts of atrocities attributed to her father during the recent Balkan war, especially the way he conducted the siege of Sarajevo. She was exposed to these reports in the relatively independent Russian press on her recent trip there just before killing herself. Darko Mladić married Aida, who gave birth on March 2, 2006 to a boy, Mladić's first grandchild. The child has been named after St. Stefan, the protector of Serbia and Republika Srpska.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ratko Mladic - Amended Indictment, from the UN ICTY’s website, October 10, 2002
  2. ^ "from the UN ICTY’s website" (PDF). UN.
  3. ^ U.N. office: Karadzic in Belgrade, CNN.com, February 11, 2004
  4. ^ "EUR 1 mn on Mladić’s head". B92 (October 12, 2007).
  5. ^ See Milosevic: A Biography by Adam Lebor, p4.
  6. ^ See Milosevic: A Biography by Adam Lebor, p4.
  7. ^ http://www.answers.com/topic/ratko-mladi
  8. ^ "International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia". UN. Retrieved on 2008-07-26.
  9. ^ "Serbia confirms that Mladic received pension until November". Southeast European Times. Retrieved on 2008-07-27.
  10. ^ "BBC Europe".
  11. ^ Mladic arrest claim is denied The Times
  12. ^ "Serbia and Montenegro International Security Institute Director Claims Mladić Was Arrested in Romania".
  13. ^ "REDAKCIJA Online".

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