World

Mladic’s conviction hailed

November 22, 2017
Ediba Salihovic, right, stands up and raises her hands as she reacts along with other Bosnian women upon hearing the sentence at the end of former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic's trial at the memorial center in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, on Wednesday. — AP
Ediba Salihovic, right, stands up and raises her hands as she reacts along with other Bosnian women upon hearing the sentence at the end of former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic's trial at the memorial center in Potocari, near Srebrenica, Bosnia, on Wednesday. — AP

THE HAGUE — World leaders welcomed the verdict against former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was found guilty by a UN war crimes tribunal of crimes against humanity and genocide during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, on Wednesday.

Hailing the verdict Germany’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said, “The German government welcomes this ruling as an important contribution to the processing of the gruesome crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.”

She said the German government would continue to advocate for the strengthening of international law, and particularly international criminal law.

Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic also welcomed the conviction. Zvizdic said in a statement that the verdict “confirmed that war criminals cannot escape justice regardless of how long they hide.”

Zvizdic said Mladic’s life sentence “will not bring back to life thousands of killed innocent civilians nor will it bring comfort to their families, but it is of immense importance for the future of (the Balkans) as a deterrent to all those who dream of future wars and continue to stoke ethnic tensions.”

Paddy Ashdown, a former UN High Representative for Bosnia, said the genocide conviction of Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic is a victory for justice.

Ashdown, a former leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrat party, said, “those who value the rule of law in war will welcome” the verdict against “the murderer of Srebrenica.”

He said that “those who bled in the Bosnian wars have retribution and that those in Bosnia who “understand there is no peace without justice can now look more confidently to the future.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein termed the conviction of Mladic as a “momentous victory for justice.”

In a statement, he said Mladic is “the epitome of evil, and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of what international justice is all about.”

He added: “Mladic presided over some of the darkest crimes to occur in Europe since World War II, bringing terror, death and destruction to thousands of victims, and sorrow, tragedy and trauma to countless more.”

“Today’s verdict is a warning to the perpetrators of such crimes that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take. They will be held accountable,” Zeid said.

Meanwhile, a former prisoner of Serb-run camps in northwestern Bosnia who became a symbol of the 1992-95 war horrors said justice has finally been satisfied with the sentencing of Mladic.

Fikret Alic was featured in photos published in Time magazine in 1992, when thousands of Muslims were rounded up in the notorious camps by the Bosnian Serb troops.

Alic’s skeletal figure behind a barbed wire shocked the world and raised international awareness of the war.

Alic said: “justice has won, and the war criminal has been convicted.” He added the verdict “means that the example will help prevent war crimes in the future.”

Alic was in The Hague, Netherlands, as UN judges declared Mladic guilty of genocide and other crimes and sentenced him to life in prison. — AP


November 22, 2017
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