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Historic verdict due in genocide trial of 'Butcher of Bosnia'
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A Bosnian woman arrives to offer prayers beside gravestone at the memorial center of Potocari near Srebrenica on Nov. 21, 2017. On November 22, 2017, ICTY judges will deliver their verdict on Bosnian Serb wartime military chief Ratko Mladic, who faces 11 charges including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity -- arising from Bosnia's 1992-1995 war. (Agence France -Presse/Dimitar DILKOFF )
U
N war crimes judges will on Wednesday seek to close a chapter in the brutal Balkans conflicts of the 1990s, handing down a historic verdict in the genocide trial of former Bosnian Serbian commander Ratko Mladic.
Dubbed "The Butcher of Bosnia," Mladic's trial is the last before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the judgement has been long awaited by tens of thousands of victims across the bitterly-divided region.
The man, who remains a hero to many in Serbia, has denied 11 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the 1992-1995 war that killed 100,000 and displaced 2.2 million as ethnic rivalries tore Yugoslavia apart.
Now 74, Mladic is the highest military commander to be judged by the tribunal set up in 1993 and based in The Hague. The verdict is set to start at 0900 GMT.
Prosecutors accuse Mladic and his political counterpart Radovan Karadzic of seeking through ethnic cleansing to "permanently remove" Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from areas claimed by Bosnian Serbs.
Wednesday's verdict "is one of the most important in the history of the tribunal", chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told AFP.
Mladic "was the mastermind behind the killing of thousands of people," he said. In a twist of fate, former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died in 2006 while on trial.
Caught after 16 years on the run, Mladic faces two genocide charges including for the 1995 massacre in northeastern Srebrenica, where troops under his command slaughtered almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
The killings, in which the victims were marched away, shot in the back and dumped in mass graves, was one of the darkest episodes in the conflict, and has been called the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.
