This article titled “Serbia arrests Ratko Mladic to ‘lift stain’ of Bosnia atrocities” was written by Ian Traynor, Europe editor, for The Guardian on Thursday 26th May 2011 19.11 UTC

Europe’s most wanted war crimes suspect, General Ratko Mladic, was arrested in a north Serbian village 16 years after commanding the worst atrocity on the continent since the Nazi era.

The surprise arrest of the genocide suspect, wanted for the mass murder of almost 8,000 men in Srebrenica, turned a page in the history of the Balkans, offering Serbia closure on decades as a virtual international pariah and giving the country a chance to take its place as a pivotal regional democracy eventually anchored in the European Union.

“We have lifted the stain from Serbia and from Serbs wherever they live,” said President Boris Tadic, announcing the arrest of the fugitive who had been living in a cousin’s cottage in a village north-east of Belgrade under the alias Milorad Komadic. “We have ended a difficult period in our history,” Tadic added.

The 69-year-old retired general, who commanded the Bosnian Serb military during the 1992-95 war and earned a fearsome reputation as the Butcher of Bosnia, was taken to a special court in Belgrade pending extradition to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Mladic appeared in court on Thursday night, looking frail and walking slowly. He wore a baseball cap and could be heard on state TV saying “good day” to those present.

Mladic’s lawyer said the judge cut short the questioning because the suspect’s “poor physical state” left him unable to communicate. “He is aware he is under arrest, he knows where he is, and he said he does not recognise The Hague tribunal,” said attorney Milos Saljic.

Deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said that Mladic is taking a lot of medicine, but “responds very rationally to everything that is going on”.

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader arrested three years ago, is on trial in The Hague on similar charges to Mladic. To speed the proceedings, there will be attempts to merge the two trials into one, sources said.

In a message from his cell on the Dutch coast, Karadzic said he was “very sorry” for Mladic’s “loss of freedom”.

According to officials in Belgrade and accounts to the Serbian media, Mladic wore no disguise and put up no resistance when detained by the Serbian security service in the village of Lazarevo. The general was said to have suffered a stroke, and to be paralysed in one arm. “I am Ratko Mladic,” he reportedly said when arrested.

Local people took to the streets to show their support for Mladic, singing Serbian nationalist songs. “To us, Mladic is a hero, a military hero,” said one, who would only give his name as Paul. “He protected us from Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, even Slovenia. He saved our families,” he said.

The image of a frail and sickly rural retiree was a far cry from the strutting, imperious commander of the 1990s who was a monstrous figure to the Muslims of Bosnia and whose name is synonymous with the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 when Mladic’s forces overran the Bosnian Muslim “safe haven” hill town, then methodically rounded up the males and murdered almost 8,000.

Mladic will be allowed to appeal against extradition, meaning it could be at least a week before he is flown to the Netherlands. The Serbian government is under strong international pressure to get Mladic to The Hague. Tadic said preparations were under way to send Mladic to the Netherlands.

“Mladic will face the charges against him in the international tribunal,” said Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief.

Serge Brammertz, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, said: “We await arrangements for his transfer to The Hague where he will stand trial.”

Barack Obama, in France for the G8 summit, said Mladic must answer to his victims and the world in a court of law.

The arrest represents a huge boost to Serbia’s attempts to move on from a violent past and to try to catch up with other parts of the Balkans in the race towards integration in the EU and possibly Nato.

The arrest came as a coda to the experiment in international justice that has been the Hague tribunal for almost 20 years. Only one of 161 people charged with war crimes remains at large – Goran Hadzic, a wartime leader of the Croatian Serbs.

The continued liberty of Mladic, the most notorious of the Balkan warlords of the 90s, has been the biggest block on Serbia’s international ambitions for years. Following the arrest and extradition in 2008 of Karadzic, as well as the transfer of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague in 2001, Belgrade is confident it is now washing away the stigma of war crimes.

The Srebrenica massacre was the worst atrocity in Europe for decades and the only event in Bosnia that the tribunal has judged to have been an act of genocide in a war that left 100,000 dead, two thirds of them Bosnian Muslims.

Mladic also faces charges of orchestrating a campaign of terror against the civilian population of Sarajevo, the city his forces kept under siege for more than three years during which 10,000 were killed, of taking UN peacekeepers hostage, and of “the murders, persecution, forcible transfer, detention and mistreatment of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during the campaign to permanently remove such persons from the territory under the control of [his] forces”.

Munira Subasic, who heads the association of Bosnian women who lost sons, fathers and husbands at Srebrenica, said: “I’m sorry for all the victims who are dead and cannot see this day.”

When Mladic was indicted by the tribunal in 1995, the judge described the alleged crimes as “truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history”.

The prosecution evidence, said Judge Fouad Riad, pointed to deeds of “unimaginable savagery … men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers’ eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson”.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato secretary general, said: “Mladic played a key role in some of the darkest episodes of Balkan and European history.”

Additional reporting by Kevin Burden in Lazarevo.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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As the former commander of NATO during the Bosnian conflict, retired Gen. Wesley Clark has taken to calling out John McCain for a variety of alleged shortcomings.

As has been well documented on this site, Clark made quite a few absurd statements during his Sunday appearance on “Face The Nation.”

“In the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk,” Clark said “It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions.

If by “gauging your opponent” he means hanging with war criminals like Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, then I guess he’s right, John McCain hasn’t done that.

On Monday, Clark stuck to his guns and refused to apologize for his comments about McCain. He even made a few new points.

“John McCain is running his campaign on his experience and how his experience would benefit him and our nation as president. That experience shows courage and commitment to our country – but it doesn’t include executive experience wrestling with national policy or go-to-war decisions,” Clark said. “And in this area his judgment has been flawed…”

“flawed judgment” are exactly the words that come to mind when I think about Wes Clark enjoying photo ops with war criminals like Ratko Mladic and accepting gifts from him that included a bottle of brandy, his hat, and a pistol.

For those who don’t know about Ratko Mladic, let’s just say he’s the last guy on earth a respectable officer in the United States military would ever accept a gift from.

At least every respectable officer except NATO commander, Gen. Wesley Clark who’s pictured above wearing Mladic’s hat. Yes, that is Clark’s hat with his 4 stars on it sitting atop the war criminals head. Notice the rather unenthusiastic look on the British commanders face as he stands there for that unfortunate picture.

Mladić was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity 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 Bosnian Muslim men and boys on July 11, 1995 at Srebrenica.

He took a page right out of Hitler’s playbook with that one. The movie “Behind Enemy Lines” with Owen Wilson is partially based on the horrific war crimes perpetrated by Ratko Mladic.

So excuse me while I attempt to control my laughter when Clark lectures John McCain about “flawed judgment.” He’s lecturing a man who had the chance to leave that Hanoi pit of hell he was in after just two years of captivity.

McCain refused and said he wasn’t leaving without the other men, which resulted in his continued imprisonment for another 3 1/2 years much of which was spent in solitary confinement. He was brutally tortured every day and cannot raise his arms above his mid-chest even today as a result of it.

He was hung in the air with his arms behind him for sometimes as long as two days which permanently destroyed his shoulders.

If “judgment” is really what the Obama campaign wants to talk about, Clark is a piss poor surrogate to have that conversation.

(hat tip to Michelle for bringing this to my attention)