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June 3, 2011 |
Bosnian Serb war fugitive Ratko Mladic captured
On May 26, 2011, notorious war fugitive Ratko Mladic was arrested in a village in northern Serbia. The former Bosnian Serb general is accused of overseeing the worst massacre in Europe since the end of World War II. He was indicted 16 years ago for his role in the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebenica and for war crimes in the four-year siege of Sarajevo that killed 10,000, including 1,500 children. He will face genocide charges in The Hague. The arrest is a reminder of the atrocities that occurred during the Balkan conflict. --Leanne Burden Seidel(41 photos total)

In a July 13, 1995, file photo, an unidentified woman and her mother, refugees from Srebrenica, cry together at a UN base north of Sarajevo because they don't know what happened to the rest of their family. Ratko Mladic, the ruthless Bosnian Serb military leader charged with orchestrating the July 1995 slaughter of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, was arrested at a relative's home in a tiny Serbian village on May 26, 2011, after a 16-year hunt. (Darko Bandic/Associated Press) #

In an image from a 1995 file video, a grinning Ratko Mladic pats Bosnian Serb boy Izudin Alic, then 8, on the head and assures him everyone in Srebrenica, Bosnia, would be safe, as other young Bosnian Muslims look on. Hours afterward, some 8,000 men and boys were murdered. Izudin Alic escaped with his life to bear witness to the incident. (AP Photo) #

Izudin Alic, 24, a Bosnian Muslim, touches his father's gravestone at the memorial cemetery Potocari, near Srebrenica, on May 31, 2011. Alic appears in a video of a grinning Ratko Mladic patting him on the head and assuring him everyone would be safe at Srebrenica just hours before overseeing the murder of 8,000 men and boys. Alic recalls with crystal clarity the sunny day he met the former Bosnian Serb military commander who gave him chocolate, and who now faces genocide charges at the UN war crimes tribunal. "I was 8 and I didn't know what was going on and who Ratko Mladic was," Izudin Alic told the Associated Press. (Almir Alic/Associated Press) #

International forensic experts examine dozens of bodies in a mass grave in the Serb entity of Pilicer, Bosnia, in a Sept. 18, 1996, file photo. They are believed to be some of the 8,000 missing persons who fled Srebrenica in July 1995. Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic was arrested in Serbia on May 26, 2011, after being found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said. (Kevin Coombs/Reuters)#

In a July 13, 1995, file photo, Dutch UN peacekeepers watch while Muslim refugees from Srebrenica gather in the nearby village of Potocari. Witnesses to slaughter, Dutch troops assigned to protect the Muslims of Srebrenica say they find little relief from the trauma and shame 16 years later, even after the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general who overran their unit. Nowhere outside the Balkans did the 1995 Srebrenica massacre have such a profound effect as it did in the Netherlands, which sent ill-prepared troops in blue UN helmets into the Bosnian morass. (AP Photo) #

Bosnian Serb Army commander General Ratko Mladic is greeted by a French Foreign Legion officer on his arrival at a failed UN-sponsored meeting of the three warring Bosnian parties in this April 12, 1993, file photo. Mladic's arrest on May 26, 2011, after 16 years on the run opens the way for the once-pariah state to seek to join the European Union. (Reuters) #

Portraits of Bosnian Muslims, victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, are pasted on the wall in a room where survivors gathered in the Bosnian town of Tuzla in July 7, 2005. Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic was arrested in Serbia on May 26, 2011, after 16 years on the run from international genocide charges. Mladic, accused of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and a brutal 43-month siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, was found in a farmhouse owned by a cousin, a police official said. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters) #

Ratko Mladic, wearing a baseball cap, enters court in Belgrade on May 26, 2011. The ruthless Bosnian Serb military leader charged with orchestrating Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II, was arrested before dawn at a relative's home in a tiny Serbian village after a 16-year hunt. (Serbian Government/Associated Press) #

People watch as Serbian gendarmes secure a convoy allegedly carrying Bosnian Serb ex-army chief Ratko Mladic from the special court for war crimes in Belgrade to the city airport on May 31, 2011. The alleged mastermind of the Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnia war, Mladic is facing charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia based in The Hague. (Andre Isakovic/AFP/Getty Images) #

A woman holding a portrait of Ratko Mladic reacts during a rally in support of the Bosnian Serb wartime general, in Banja Luka on May 31, 2011. Serbia's war crimes court rejected an appeal against the extradition of Ratko Mladic on Tuesday, opening the way for the former Bosnian Serb general's dispatch to The Hague to stand trial. Mladic is charged with genocide in the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnian War. (Ranko Cukovic/Reuters)#

Bosnian Muslim women react during a May 28, 2011, ceremony in the the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad to commemorate thousands of Bosnian Muslims killed by Serb troops commanded by Ratko Mladic at the start of Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Up to 2,000 Muslim Bosnians converged on the town to remember friends and relatives killed there. (Amel Emric/Associated Press) #

Supporters of Ratko Mladic wave flags with his picture and the words "Serbian hero" during a rally organized by the ultra nationalist Serbian Radical Party in front of the Parliament building on May 29, 2011, in Belgrade. Some 7,000 supporters of the former Bosnian Serb army chief took to the streets to hear speeches and protest Mladic's arrest. (Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images) #

In this July 14, 1995, photo, refugee Ferida Osmanovic from Srebrenica is found hanged in a forest outside the UN base at Tuzla airport. The woman, who looked to be in her early 20s, had hanged herself with a torn blanket. More than 10,000 refugees from the UN safe haven of Srebrenica, captured by the Bosian Serbs, arrived in Tuzla. Bosnia Serb commander General Ratko Mladic announced that approximately 40,000 residents had been cleared from their homes in Srebrenica. (Darko Bandic/Associated Press) #

In top photo, a disused tank stands at a crossroad in front of a ruined building in the Kovacici district in Sarajevo in February 1996. In bottom photo, people walk along the same road on May 30, 2011. Sarajevo announced plans on May 30 to open a museum of its brutal siege by Bosnian Serb forces, saying the approaching trial of commander Ratko Mladic made it all the more important to display the evidence. The museum will open on the siege's 20th anniversary next year, and organizers said the timing of the announcement, four days after Mladic's capture in Serbia after nearly 16 years evading war crimes charges, was coincidental but fortuitous. (Reuters) #

In this Dec. 19, 1994, photo, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (left), former US president Jimmy Carter (center), and Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic sign a declaration proposing a four-month cease-fire in the Bosnian war in Pale, Bosnia. Mladic went on the run since 1995 when he was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for genocide in the slaughter of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and other crimes committed by his troops during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. (Sava Radovanovic/Associated Press) #

Bosnian Serb Army commander General Ratko Mladic hands out cans of beverages to Bosnian Muslims, refugees from Srebrenica, as they wait to be transported from eastern Bosnian village of Potocari to Muslim held Kladanj near Olovo on July 12, 1995. Mladic, whose long evasion of arrest on genocide charges has blocked Serbia's progress towards the European Union, was arrested in Serbia on May 26, 2011. (Reuters) #

Bosiljka Mladic (left), wife of Ratko Mladic, and their son, Darko Mladic, (center) listen to the national anthem during a rally organized by the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party in front of the Parliament building on May 29, 2011, in Belgrade. Some 7,000 supporters of the former Bosnian Serb Army chief took to the streets of Belgrade to hear speeches and protest Mladic's arrest. Mladic, who is facing extradition to the The Hague, is accused of war crimes, including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. (Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images) #

A Bosnian member of the International Commission for Missing Persons inspects bags with body remains, exhumed from mass graves, which he prepares for the process of DNA identification of the victims from the Bosnian war, in Tuzla, Bosnia, on May 27, 2011. The commission keeps finding Mladic's victims in numerous mass graves, spread around Srebrenica. The bodies are then exhumed, identified through DNA analysis, and returned to the families. Almost all Srebrenica victims get buried then in a memorial center near Srebrenica. This year, another 500 will be laid to rest there. (Darko Zabus/Associated Press) #

Bosnian Muslim woman Alic Mina cries near the grave of her son, Mihrudin, before a mass funeral in the village of Memici on June 1, 2011. The remains of eight people, victims of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign that former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is accused of instigating, were retrieved from mass graves in Zvornik and buried during the mass funeral. Mladic was extradited to the Netherlands from Serbia on June 1 after 16 years on the run. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)#

Ratko Mladic salutes as he makes his first appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on June 3, 2011, in The Hague, Netherlands, after the former Bosnian Serb Army chief was declared fit to stand trial by a court in Belgrade. Mladic was arrested May 26 after hiding from the law for 16 years. He is charged with atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. (Serge Ligtenberg/Getty Images ) #
More links and information
General Inspired Devotion, Bred Fear - Boston.com, 5/27
Mladic Refuses to Enter Plea at War Crimes Tribunal - NYTimes.com, 6/3
Bosnian War - Wikipedia entry