The Trial of Ratko Mladic (2018) Movie Script
A UN tribunal will imminently
deliver its long-awaited verdict
in the war crimes trial of former
Bosnian-Serb military commander,
Ratko Mladic, known as the
Butcher of Bosnia.
Mladic is charged with 11
counts of war crimes,
including genocide and the massacre
of thousands of Muslim men and boys
at Srebrenica in 1995.
GUNSHOTS
EXPLOSION
SCREAMS
Any last-minute thoughts?
Everybody ready to roll?
We've got this.
OK, everybody, we're going to court.
We are sitting today to deliver
the chamber's judgment in this case.
The chamber has sat for 530
trial days,
during which it received
the evidence of 592 witnesses
and nearly 10,000 exhibits.
The indictment charged two counts
of genocide, and five counts
of crimes against humanity,
namely prosecution,
murder, extermination,
deportation and the inhumane act
of forcible transfer.
The chamber will now
give its verdict.
Tomorrow, I'll be standing here,
where the podium is.
Mr Groome will be sat next to me
and Arthur will be sitting
at the end.
So, when I walk in tomorrow,
everyone is going to be here,
pretty much? Everybody will be
here, yes. Even the defence.
The defence is going to be here and
Mladic will already be
in the courtroom. OK. And he does
have the two security guys
on each side of him.
The big thing to remember when you
come in is a deep breath. Yes.
I'm a little bit nervous.
Brings the memories back.
The first witness that's testifying
is an extraordinary young man,
who was 14 at the time,
Elvedin Pasic, and it's a crime
that occurred in 1992
and it mirrors the crime committed
in Srebrenica in 1995.
And we have decided
to call him first,
because it really demonstrates
the way that Mladic approached war
and his willingness
to commit terrible crimes.
That is the public
gallery behind you.
He will just tell, in his own words,
what happened to him and his family.
And my wife is going to be somewhere
in the back room? Yes.
OK. Yes, she will be back,
right behind you. OK.
This is case RT0992T,
the prosecutor versus Ratko Mladic.
Mr Groome, is the prosecution ready
to make its opening statement?
It is, your honour.
Then you may proceed.
Your honours, four days ago,
marked two decades since
Ratko Mladic became the commander
of the main staff of the Army
of Republika Srpska, the VRS.
On that day, Mladic began his full
participation in a criminal
endeavour of ethnically
cleansing much of Bosnia.
The world watched in disbelief
that in neighbourhoods and villages,
within Europe, civilians
were targeted for no other reason
than they were an ethnicity
other than Serb.
The next time I address
you about the evidence in this case
will be at the end of the trial.
At that time, when I come
before you again, I will ask
that you give the people of Bosnia
what they have waited so long for.
The truth about what
Ratko Mladic did
to that beautiful and complex land.
The truth about what Ratko Mladic
did to Bosnia's people.
Is the prosecution is ready to call
its first witness?
Your honour, the prosecution
is ready to call its first witness,
Mr Elvedin Pasic.
I solemnly declare that I will
speak the truth,
the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, your honour.
Thank you,
Mr Pasic, please be seated.
You will now first be examined
by Miss Bibles,
who's counsel for the prosecution.
Good afternoon, Mr Pasic.
Could you tell us the size
and ethnicity of your village?
My village, Hrvacani,
was 100% Muslim.
And approximately 100 houses.
I draw your attention to May
of 1992, was there a religious
occasion celebrated in your village?
Yes.
We were celebrating our holiday,
Bajram. The first day, we went
to the mosque, I was excited,
as being a little boy.
On our second day, we were attacked.
The bombs and the shells
start landing in our village.
We were instructed to form three
lines and to lay down in this puddle
of mud and water.
I was laying down next to...
My dad was on my left-hand side,
and my uncle was on my right-hand
side. And as I was laying down,
they ordered us, all the women
and children, to get up.
And at first I didn't want to get
up, because I was afraid
to separate from my dad.
And he told me to get up.
I told him, "No, I don't
want to go without you."
He says, "Get up."
And my uncle insisted. He says,
"Get up, you will survive."
Since I'm reliving
and going back to this,
I had a dream about
my dad last night.
For the first time,
I was able to see his face.
I'm glad, because in most
of the dreams, nightmares,
that I have from the
personal experience,
I was always trying to reach him.
I saw his face last night.
I miss my dad.
Can you find my dad, please?
I would like to find my dad.
EXPLOSION
NEWS REPORT: Yugoslavia, a country
at war with itself.
Ever since Croatia and Slovenia
declared their independence,
a nation of six republics
is being dismantled
by an apparently unchecked force.
Now it's feared that the buffer
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
could become the next
theatre of conflict.
Violence has broken out in the
Republic of Bosnia Herzegovina,
after its population voted at the
weekend for independence
from the rest of Yugoslavia.
43% of the Republic's
population are Muslim.
31% are Serbs and 17% are Croats.
The Muslims and Croats
support independence,
the Serbs are fiercely
opposed to it.
Last night, the Serbs proclaimed
a breakaway republic inside Bosnia,
and today their leader,
Radovan Karadzic said
they'd have to make
their Serbian state,
whatever the cost may be.
There is chaos and anarchy,
no functioning central authority
and the United Nations
headquartered here is apparently
powerless to intervene.
What remains of the
Bosnian government has declared
a state of war.
General Ratko Mladic.
He is the scourge of Sarajevo,
the Chief Warrior of the Serbs.
He's called Ratko Mladic.
He is a man who has no doubts,
only a total assurance
that he's right, the world wrong,
and that his people
have been slandered.
Well, General Mladic is my eighth
client in front of the tribunal.
And it's obvious this is
the most important case
in my career.
My memories from the war were,
of course, horrible.
I had parents in Doboj.
It was Serb-held territory...
..but bombed and shelled every day.
My parents were protected
by General Mladic and his soldiers.
And he would tell me, always,
"Your parents live in Doboj
"thanks to me."
We, of course, would have preferred
having the Mladic's trial starting
already many, many years before.
And you are for sure right when
he arrived in The Hague last year,
his health situation
was far from perfect.
It is very, very difficult
to measure the extreme importance
of the arrest of Mladic.
We were looking
for him for 16 years.
When he arrived, it was a few days
after his last stroke.
He arrived as a very sick man.
Today, I think his situation
is much, much better,
but we will see what happens.
We have a lot of staff working
extremely hard to make sure
that this case can advance
as fast as possible.
Hey, good afternoon. I wanted
to just have a quick meeting today,
to kind of just touch base
on the preparation.
Things are starting
to pick up speed.
The two senior trial attorneys
were very experienced.
They have been working
at this tribunal for many,
many years. Dermot is somehow the
coordinator, the organiser,
and Peter McCloskey, we call him
sometimes, "Mr Srebrenica",
because he has done
a number of Srebrenica cases.
The sound is very important on this
one, which sounds perfect.
I am up pretty much at maximum.
That's where we want to be. OK.
Zoran is helping me with the clip
of a Muslim man, is it Ramo?
Ramo. Ramo Osmanovic.
He's calling...
The Serbs are making him call
to bring other Muslims
out of the woods and he is calling
his son, Nermin.
Can you check Nermin and his father,
where they were found?
Can you imagine how hard
it is to call your son
and then they kill your son?
They promise you that they will
save them, cos if they surrender
they would be all safe.
So, he's calling his son,
his son came, and...
Bye.
I was just asking the investigator
to give me the details of which mass
grave they were found in,
so that I can tell the court that.
If I watch too much of it, I...
You know, I still get...
It gets to you.
I got here in the fall of 1996.
And I was meeting survivors
at the refugee camps
and getting to know them, and
hearing their stories.
At the same time,
on the same missions,
I was with the investigator
and we would travel
into the Republika Srpska,
with borrowed shovels from the local
police and start digging
in this disturbed soil,
because we suspected mass
graves and, sure enough,
every time we found
one of these places,
we found body remains,
which were, of course,
and we understood,
the loved ones of the people
we had interviewed
the day before.
I've been so close to this work
for so long and so close
to the victims, it becomes rather
difficult to deal with the carnage.
There is a certain darkness
that comes over me when this thing
starts, especially when
the victims are here.
A human tragedy is unfolding in the
eastern enclave of Srebrenica.
Bosnian-Serb infantry have
effectively outmanoeuvred
the UN and taken
control of the town.
Resistance was reported
to be minimal.
The town was supposed
to be a safe haven,
protected by the moral and military
force of the world community
in the shape of the UN.
There are hundreds
and hundreds of people,
around probably 20,000
or more surrounding
the Dutch Battalion compound and
everybody is fleeing the city.
After overrunning Srebrenica town,
the Serbs surrounded the UN base
nearby at Potocari, where up to
40,000 refugees have gathered.
The Bosnian Serb Commander
in Chief, General Ratko Mladic
justified the attack,
stating it was to rout Muslim
terrorists and to
demilitarise the enclave.
An operation, he added,
that the UN had failed to complete.
A senior UN official here today said
that there was nothing the UN can do
at the moment, short of going to war
with the Bosnian Serbs
and that is very much
not on the agenda.
This case involves two
horrendous crimes.
The forced movement
of the Muslim population,
together with the mass murder
of thousands of Bosnian men
and boys, all amounting
to the elimination of the Muslim
population from Srebrenica
in genocide.
Mladic was present in Potocari
on 12th and 13th of July,
while the VRS began the process
of putting the women and children
on buses to
Muslim-controlled territory,
and separating and holding the
Muslim men and boys for execution.
The part where I am
asking you questions,
I think, it is going to seem
actually very short,
surprisingly, and I think
that you've probably been told
this already, but Mladic will also
be in the courtroom,
sitting up behind his lawyers.
We hope that he stays
quiet and listens,
because he should hear
what you have to say.
The reason we're calling Saliha
Osmanovic is because she decided
on the 11th of July that she had
to leave with her family
from Srebrenica, otherwise,
she would be killed by the Serbs.
You know, this is
the ethnic cleansing,
this is the "forcible transfer"
count.
And so, that is the first thing
we bring out with her.
Her situation was,
that all of a sudden,
it is not safe for us
to be in our home any more.
OK, there's fleeing the fighting,
which is normal, and we'd all do
that when the shells started.
Was there anything indicated
in her mind, anything else besides
just fleeing shells falling?
Well, it's not just shells falling,
it's a sense of being,
what she communicated, at least,
was, "I, as a Muslim,
"I am not going to be safe here."
Not just I might get caught
in some random crossfire,
she actually said, "Yeah,
it was safe if you wanted
"to get your throat slit."
Dobro jutro! How are you doing?
Kako ste? Kako ste,
I can do that too.
OK. I'll see you in there in
a minute.
TRANSLATOR INTERPRETS
OK?
Mrs Osmanovic, do you recognise
the man that is featured
in that video?
SHE CRIES
You state that you went to Potocari
on the 11th of July.
Did you go to Potocari
from the town of Srebrenica?
Up until the moment that you boarded
the bus in Potocari,
do you feel like you could
have stayed in Srebrenica
if you wanted to?
What is being described
as deportation by the prosecution
in relation to Srebrenica,
was a humanitarian evacuation
that was agreed to by all sides.
My goal, with this witness, is to
see if I can link up certain parts
of her written testimony to video
footage that we have of the actual
events that she seems
to be describing.
We hope to show our client,
General Mladic,
acting in a very humane light,
providing food and water to the
civilians
that were located there.
The demeanour of General Mladic,
is it similar to or different
from the demeanour of General Mladic
during the encounter
that you remember with him?
Madam, you mention that there was
water and chocolates being handed
out, was there also bread being
handed out by the VRS soldiers?
Mrs Osmanovic, the chamber
understands that being taken back
to the events must be emotional for
you, we appreciate that you came.
You may now follow the usher.
I don't see how you did. You were
just wonderful. Thank you.
Danny really shook her.
Although she was a victim and when
you have a victim in front of you,
you have to deal with the victim,
very, very nicely, very softly.
But still he was capable
of shaking her.
We have the instruction
from the general to say sorry
to a victim, and I never do that.
It's not my job.
He instructs me that, no.
My job is to cross-examine.
I am a lawyer, I cross-examine.
If you want to apologise,
write a letter.
Hundreds of bodies believed
to have been killed by Serb forces
have been found in a mass grave
in Bosnia, in the Prijedor area.
They knew this grave existed
for years, but
Bosnian Serb witnesses kept silent
about its location until...
The ghosts of the missing
still haunt the villages here
and the graveyards still wait for
the dead.
This discovery could bring an end
to that waiting and bring evidence
of war crimes
that can no longer be hidden.
So once you've stripped
off the top layer of earth,
did you, at that stage,
know that there were likely
to be bodies there? We could see
the changes... In the, in the
earth?
We need to strip this brown soil
to get to this yellow...
Grey clay, yes.
And because,
air couldn't get through that clay,
bodies are well preserved.
And do the pathologists think
that because of that soft tissue,
that they can make findings
about cause of death?
Exactly. OK. And a lot of this was
organised by the army itself?
Army and the police. The army and
the police. And the local police.
Prijedor was the first place
to be ethnically cleansed
with vicious Serb atrocities.
We're very upset to see outright
murder, burning people to death
in their own homes,
dragging them out into the street
and shooting them
at point blank range.
Omarska concentration camp,
ethnic cleansing at its
most graphic.
Thousands of Muslims in scenes
chillingly reminiscent
of the Holocaust.
And you can see
the different states. Yeah.
You can see that one there.
That'll be solid. Yeah.
What kinds of injuries are you
finding,
the ones that you can
determine an injury?
Back of the head or...?
There's a skull over there,
which, as you can see,
is being reconstructed.
And all this shattering is typical
of high velocity injury.
Once it's all put together,
we've got quite a lot
of good evidence,
you can...we can see from it.
You can see the tragedy of it,
when you look around,
I mean, it's clear
that these are not soldiers,
these are women, there are even some
children over there.
This is just an outrage
that these people were killed
in the way that they were killed,
and dumped in the site
that they were dumped.
In terms of the case,
it's so important.
Because in terms of proving
that they were murdered by people
that are accountable to Mladic,
we need to have that evidence.
So, do you find,
as a military person,
General Mladic's presence
at this meeting, do you find
that to be an exercise of command?
Yes, sir. He's the commander
of the Army of the Republika Srpska.
Everything that he does
or everything that he does not
do as the commander is
an exercise of command.
He's not pulling the trigger,
we don't have him standing
at any execution site,
but we have to show
that he is in command
of the troops that are doing it
and he's fully aware
of what is going on and,
in fact, ordered it and began
the whole process,
which the evidence is very clear on.
General Dannatt, from a purely
military perspective,
is General Mladic responsible
for the conduct of his
subordinates in Srebrenica?
Well, it's clear to me
that he exercised a large measure
of personal control
as to what was going on.
He was known to be a big character,
and therefore what he said
and what he ordered,
people were likely to do.
Can you describe please
how the Serb soldiers spoke
to you and the other prisoners?
Turning specifically to the time
period of the executions
in the field, can you tell us
if you heard any exchanges
between wounded men and the Serb
soldiers who had been shooting them?
Mr Nikolic, I would like to ask
you how you feel about
having participated in these events?
Mr Kenjic was called to confirm
the alibi that explains
the movements of General Mladic
from the 14th of July
until 17th of July 1995...
..while Srebrenica
killings happened,
and through this witness we want to,
among other things,
prove and explain that General
Mladic has nothing to do
with those killings.
Mr Kenjic drove Mr Mladic
from Srebrenica to Belgrade
on the 14th. We have meetings that
he had with internationalists,
we have his visit to his
daughter's grave on the 15th,
we have the 16th a wedding,
a visit to a military medical
academy, and we have his
return to the 17th.
Mr Mladic did not have any
means of communication.
He was outside the area
and, by Serbian military law
at that time, he was not in command.
I am 100% sure that there is nothing
that can touch that alibi.
Thank you, Mr Stajanovic.
Mr Kenjic, you'll now be
cross-examined by Mr McCloskey.
Good morning, Mr Kenjic.
As you sit here now,
do you remember, on that day,
the afternoon of 14 July,
which route you actually took?
Were you aware, at the time,
large numbers of Muslim soldiers
and civilians were
fleeing the Srebrenica enclave
and had crossed that road,
and were still in those woods
all around that area
where you're driving?
As you drove past
the Nova Kasaba area,
did you see any large pits being dug
near the side of the road?
No.
At the time that you were in
Konjevic Polje with General Mladic,
did you hear any information
that there were hundreds
and hundreds of dead and dying
Muslims at the Kravica warehouse
at that time?
So, did you have any information
about the other prisoners,
roughly 800 to a thousand,
at the nearby Petkovci school,
the nearby Rocevic school,
the Pilica cultural centre,
and the Kula school?
Did you hear about any of
those thousands of prisoners
that were in those schools
at the time you're driving
by that area?
Nothing further, Mr President.
Thank you.
This guy drove Mladic right
through the heart of darkness,
right past or near
the significant mass murder sites
and gravesites.
That's a very good reminder
that Mladic is in the centre
of things, both as a commander
and as a person on the ground.
As an alibi witness,
you generally...
..that's a pretty tough alibi.
NEWS REPORTER: To be on the wrong
side of the ethnic front line
in Bosnia is a terrifying
experience, whoever you are.
These people are Serbs, fleeing,
they say, for their lives.
They said they wanted to escape
to friendly territory because Serbs
in a village near them had been
massacred by Muslim troops...
Today, hundreds of Serbs attended
a funeral for 39 of their men
and women in a village seized
by the Muslims earlier this year,
recaptured by the Serbs last week...
APPLAUSE
FOLK MUSIC PLAYS
CANNON FIRES
EXCITED SHOUTS AND CHEERS
For me, he is a hero firstly
because he is my dad.
Even for small things in life,
he was so dedicated that you should
do something right, never lie.
He despised lies.
He always told me,
"You should tell me the truth,
"nevertheless how difficult the
truth is, because if you lied to me,
"I will not know how to help you."
Maybe we have a
different temperament.
I am more calm than he is.
He is a very good person, but he can
explode, he can burst.
But values I openly declare
are his values.
I am sorry for every victim,
but I cannot accept his guilt.
I cannot accept what
I don't believe is true,
if I believe it,
then I would accept it,
but I can't accept it,
because the other side has a need
for me to do it.
It a real joke to ask
from us to be prepared.
It's not possible.
Simply not possible.
And I don't think it's good example
for any kind of justice,
let alone international justice.
We probably need at least as many
lawyers as the prosecution has.
We need as many investigators.
We have only a couple of them.
And the prosecution
has the whole system.
It is a real fight
in between David and Goliath.
That's exactly what I was afraid
of before we came here.
That we might have many good talks,
but no witnesses.
My humble opinion is that,
at this moment, Bosnia does not need
shows for public as Tomasica.
Because it's just a show.
And it's just prolongation
of Bosnian agony.
We should bury our dead,
and we should move forward.
And having wounds reopened
all the time
cannot help reconciliation.
These are killing fields.
In World War II? Yes. Yes.
To understand Bosnia,
it's conflict from the '90s,
you have to know what happened
during the World War, the second.
If you do not understand Jasenovac,
where we are here now,
you cannot understand
the conflict in Bosnia.
Every single family lost its member
due to that genocide committed
against Serbian people.
Eye for an eye is not allowed
as a defence in front
of this tribunal.
But there was revenge.
And you could not control everybody
who was armed during the war,
so it was not something that
you could blame General Mladic
and to blame Serbian leadership,
that it was organised.
Tomasica can be an excellent
example, actually, of revenge.
It can be an excellent
example of continuation
of this Bosnian bloody story.
It happens in this area.
And it happened before.
And I'm afraid that it could happen
in the future. I hope not.
Welcome, everybody, to the 80th week
of the Mladic trial.
Officially on the record
we are on the 333rd day.
In terms of events
in the trial, where is...
There he is, Ed filed
the Tomasica motion last week,
right on schedule. Thank you very
much for doing that.
The most significant addition since
we've had the last team meeting
is that Alan Tieger is here.
It's of course my
pleasure to be on board.
I simply look forward to working
with each one of you.
I hope to meet with all...
It's an extraordinary responsibility
and professional privilege to lead
this team for this case at this
point in the tribunal's existence.
My parents were both survivors
whose, virtually, entire families
were murdered during the Holocaust.
And no...
No survivor truly escapes that.
I could see the visible effects
of those crimes every day.
And I certainly felt that when I
met and worked with those victims
in Prijedor.
Mladic is charged with seven
different massacres that took place
in about a six-day period in
Prijedor municipality
in late July 1992.
More than 1000 people in Prijedor
went missing during the course
of about those six days.
Nobody's ever been convicted
of genocide here,
for what happened in 1992.
In Prijedor, or anywhere else.
This is the last trial here,
so it is the last opportunity.
And I think all of us feel some
sense of historical obligation
to make sure that it's recorded
here what happened.
And General Mladic's
responsibility for it.
The cleansing campaign
reached its most brutal apex
in Prijedor municipality.
What you see on this next slide
is those villages which are most
relevant to cleansing
campaign in Prijedor.
As you see, many of the communities
by 1993 genuinely,
literally,
chillingly no longer existed.
Mr Hanson, were you called
upon to assist in the exhumation
of the Tomasica site in 2013?
Yes, I was.
And did it reveal the presence of
graves, and, if so, how many?
Yes. Three separate graves.
Were you are able to determine
how much time may have transpired
between the deposits of bodies?
Exact timings, no.
However, the bodies
were very well preserved.
This is consistent with a burial
quite soon after death.
Sir, what did you observe
as the most frequent cause of death?
I found that the vast majority
of the people in this gravesite
had been shot. A surprisingly high
number of shots were to the head.
A very common finding
was a bullet wound,
a bullet injury
to the back of the head.
What can you tell us
about the clothes found
on the bodies exhumed from Tomasica?
The clothing was just
ordinary clothing.
Some people had suit jackets,
some people had work jackets,
or dungarees. But it was mostly
sort of casual clothes.
When, in a community like Prijedor,
more than 1,500 people are murdered
in a short time, thousands
and thousands more starved,
degraded, abused, humiliated,
tormented, when most of their homes
are destroyed, when their mosques
are reduced to rubble,
and when they are scattered
to an impoverished exile...
..the intent to destroy that
community
and prevented from reconstituting
itself is unmistakable.
And the word for those crimes
with that intent, is "genocide".
You had occasion to meet
with General Mladic in Prijedor
answer, "No, I never met
the general, never saw him
"at any meeting that I attended,
nor did I hear from anyone else
"that he had been in Prijedor."
Mr Marjanovic, you will now
be cross-examined by Mr Traldi.
Mr Traldi is counsel
for the prosecution.
Thanks, Mr President.
Good morning, sir.
Can we have 65 to 31041?
Do you recognise the people in
this photograph?
Who is the man on the far right,
looking away from the camera?
And the person immediately
to your right hand,
with the moustache, who's that?
The man next to him, in the tie?
And the man next to him
come on the far left?
All four of you worked at RZR
Ljubija before the war, right?
You and Mr Balaban were Serbs,
while Mr Paunovic and Mr Zahirovic
were Muslims?
Now, Mr Paunovic and Mr Zahirovic,
have you ever seen either of them
after the war?
Did he know what was
happening in Prijedor?
Yeah, of course.
It's very hard to start with 50,000
Muslims in your municipality,
wind up with six a couple
of months later, 6,000,
and then virtually none by the end
of the war, and miss that.
It's too large a change
in the composition of the people
you interact with every day.
And he would have been
in downtown Prijedor,
where he lived, when one
of the neighbourhoods there,
Stari Grad,
was destroyed by the VRS.
He would have been in downtown
Prijedor, where he lived,
when the Room 3 massacre
at Keraterm occurred.
Of course he knew crimes
were being committed, yeah.
Nobody could have missed that.
Whether he knew about
this grave specifically...
If he didn't, it would have required
a wilful attempt to avoid knowing
what was being done on his property.
On his company's property.
The evidence of genocide presented
in this courtroom for the last four
and a half years was clear,
comprehensive and unassailable.
We have Mladic in the dock,
answering for his crimes.
History will judge if justice
was done and seen to be done.
The defence does not deny
that unfortunate crimes occurred.
But those in no way can be connected
to General Ratko Mladic.
There is no credible evidence
linking General Mladic's presence
to any of the alleged
killing or execution sites.
We should all agree that he sits
here innocent before us right now.
The time has come for General Mladic
to be held accountable
for those crimes against each
of his victims and the communities
he destroyed.
It would be an affront to justice
to impose any sentence other
than the most severe
available under law.
We're returning now to the trial
of...
We're back live now, in the Hague.
The United Nations
War Crimes Tribunal...
An international war
crimes court in the Hague
is delivering its verdict...
You're watching continuous coverage
of the verdict in the trial...
Just to remind you that
General Ratko Mladic had asked
for a bathroom break, effectively,
about 35 minutes ago.
We're still trying to assess
exactly what is going on here.
We assume this
is just a temporary pause.
The Bosnian TV reported
that apparently he had some medical
issues and they are
doing the medical checks.
If he has a medical thing now,
it's not a coincidence. Is it?
He turned red in his face, you know?
Usually when he turns red
in his face, this is a sign
that his blood pressure is high.
And for him, this is
a life-threatening situation.
OK, the medical officer wanted
to speak to the cardiologist,
but now it seems like
we're going to be resuming.
Mr Mladic's blood pressure was read
three times during the break.
The first reading,
I believe, is 175/96.
The second reading,
done by a nurse, was 180/80.
According to both
the American Heart Association
and the United Kingdom
Cardiovascular Association,
that is called hypertensive crisis.
Under those circumstances,
the defence asks that your honours
either halt these proceedings,
or we waive reading of the summary
and pronounce your judgment,
so we can lessen the risk of further
harm to Mr Mladic's health.
Mr Ivetic, the doctor's advice we
got is that the situation is not
such that medical reasons
would prevent us from continuing.
Mr Mladic wants to consult with
counsel, I take it?
If he does it in such a way that
no-one can hear your voice,
and sit down, please.
Mr Mladic, sit...
Mr...
Mr Mladic, if you could...
Curtains down. Mr Mladic will be
removed from the courtroom.
OK. It goes on.
Having summarised its findings,
the chamber will now
give its verdict.
The chamber finds Ratko Mladic
not guilty of count one, genocide.
Guilty as a member of various joint
criminal enterprises
of the following counts.
Count two, Srebrenica, genocide.
Count three, persecution,
a crime against humanity.
Count four, extermination...
The judgment, the verdict
in the case of Ratko Mladic,
the former general of
the Bosnian Serb forces,
has just been handed down.
He was found guilty of ten of the
11 charges against him,
on one charge of genocide
he was found not guilty.
The crimes committed
rank among the most heinous known
to humankind, and include
genocide and extermination
as a crime against humanity.
For having committed these crimes,
the chamber sentences
Mr Ratko Mladic
to life imprisonment.
Yes.
Well done. Well, guys, let's be
happy for a moment.
I think that's a great result.
A great team effort.
The word "life" keeps resonating in
my head.
And had there been anything but
that, I would have been very angry.
After that amazing long road,
to hear that word...
Life, life.
That tells the whole story.
Now I'm ready to quibble
about the, er...
About what? About count one.
The way I understood
it was it was just a substantiality
away from a genocide finding.
They didn't find that it met
all the legal elements for genocide.
But they recognised the effect
of the ethnic cleansing
campaign in Prijedor.
Guys, many, many thanks.
We are the winning team.
The defence team considers
this judgment to be erroneous
and there will be an appeal.
And we believe that the appeal
will correct the errors
of the trial chamber.
We saw each other 5-10
minutes after the verdict.
My father, he said
this is all a lie.
So we refuse this sentence.
This is a great injustice,
done to Serbian people
in the first place.
And my father was a symbol
of this fight for freedom
of Serbian people.
To this day, not a single Serbian
victim was protected.
Nobody was ever accused of it.
And you're asking Serbs
whether they accept this tribunal
as impartial? No, they don't.
They will never do so.
Over the last couple of hours,
we heard a detailed reassessment
of the evidence that had been heard
inside this court behind me.
Evidence which, at times,
magnified the brutality of some
of General Ratko Mladic's crimes.
Mladic's crimes have now
been recorded in history.
During his trial, the court heard
from 4,500 people who bore witness
to the killings he ordered.
It took a quarter of a century
for their voices to be heard,
for their dead
to receive some justice.
So, what do you think,
how do you feel with the verdict?
I am very happy now.
Is it over?
Not really. But I'm happy.
Is it justice? Yes.
deliver its long-awaited verdict
in the war crimes trial of former
Bosnian-Serb military commander,
Ratko Mladic, known as the
Butcher of Bosnia.
Mladic is charged with 11
counts of war crimes,
including genocide and the massacre
of thousands of Muslim men and boys
at Srebrenica in 1995.
GUNSHOTS
EXPLOSION
SCREAMS
Any last-minute thoughts?
Everybody ready to roll?
We've got this.
OK, everybody, we're going to court.
We are sitting today to deliver
the chamber's judgment in this case.
The chamber has sat for 530
trial days,
during which it received
the evidence of 592 witnesses
and nearly 10,000 exhibits.
The indictment charged two counts
of genocide, and five counts
of crimes against humanity,
namely prosecution,
murder, extermination,
deportation and the inhumane act
of forcible transfer.
The chamber will now
give its verdict.
Tomorrow, I'll be standing here,
where the podium is.
Mr Groome will be sat next to me
and Arthur will be sitting
at the end.
So, when I walk in tomorrow,
everyone is going to be here,
pretty much? Everybody will be
here, yes. Even the defence.
The defence is going to be here and
Mladic will already be
in the courtroom. OK. And he does
have the two security guys
on each side of him.
The big thing to remember when you
come in is a deep breath. Yes.
I'm a little bit nervous.
Brings the memories back.
The first witness that's testifying
is an extraordinary young man,
who was 14 at the time,
Elvedin Pasic, and it's a crime
that occurred in 1992
and it mirrors the crime committed
in Srebrenica in 1995.
And we have decided
to call him first,
because it really demonstrates
the way that Mladic approached war
and his willingness
to commit terrible crimes.
That is the public
gallery behind you.
He will just tell, in his own words,
what happened to him and his family.
And my wife is going to be somewhere
in the back room? Yes.
OK. Yes, she will be back,
right behind you. OK.
This is case RT0992T,
the prosecutor versus Ratko Mladic.
Mr Groome, is the prosecution ready
to make its opening statement?
It is, your honour.
Then you may proceed.
Your honours, four days ago,
marked two decades since
Ratko Mladic became the commander
of the main staff of the Army
of Republika Srpska, the VRS.
On that day, Mladic began his full
participation in a criminal
endeavour of ethnically
cleansing much of Bosnia.
The world watched in disbelief
that in neighbourhoods and villages,
within Europe, civilians
were targeted for no other reason
than they were an ethnicity
other than Serb.
The next time I address
you about the evidence in this case
will be at the end of the trial.
At that time, when I come
before you again, I will ask
that you give the people of Bosnia
what they have waited so long for.
The truth about what
Ratko Mladic did
to that beautiful and complex land.
The truth about what Ratko Mladic
did to Bosnia's people.
Is the prosecution is ready to call
its first witness?
Your honour, the prosecution
is ready to call its first witness,
Mr Elvedin Pasic.
I solemnly declare that I will
speak the truth,
the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, your honour.
Thank you,
Mr Pasic, please be seated.
You will now first be examined
by Miss Bibles,
who's counsel for the prosecution.
Good afternoon, Mr Pasic.
Could you tell us the size
and ethnicity of your village?
My village, Hrvacani,
was 100% Muslim.
And approximately 100 houses.
I draw your attention to May
of 1992, was there a religious
occasion celebrated in your village?
Yes.
We were celebrating our holiday,
Bajram. The first day, we went
to the mosque, I was excited,
as being a little boy.
On our second day, we were attacked.
The bombs and the shells
start landing in our village.
We were instructed to form three
lines and to lay down in this puddle
of mud and water.
I was laying down next to...
My dad was on my left-hand side,
and my uncle was on my right-hand
side. And as I was laying down,
they ordered us, all the women
and children, to get up.
And at first I didn't want to get
up, because I was afraid
to separate from my dad.
And he told me to get up.
I told him, "No, I don't
want to go without you."
He says, "Get up."
And my uncle insisted. He says,
"Get up, you will survive."
Since I'm reliving
and going back to this,
I had a dream about
my dad last night.
For the first time,
I was able to see his face.
I'm glad, because in most
of the dreams, nightmares,
that I have from the
personal experience,
I was always trying to reach him.
I saw his face last night.
I miss my dad.
Can you find my dad, please?
I would like to find my dad.
EXPLOSION
NEWS REPORT: Yugoslavia, a country
at war with itself.
Ever since Croatia and Slovenia
declared their independence,
a nation of six republics
is being dismantled
by an apparently unchecked force.
Now it's feared that the buffer
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
could become the next
theatre of conflict.
Violence has broken out in the
Republic of Bosnia Herzegovina,
after its population voted at the
weekend for independence
from the rest of Yugoslavia.
43% of the Republic's
population are Muslim.
31% are Serbs and 17% are Croats.
The Muslims and Croats
support independence,
the Serbs are fiercely
opposed to it.
Last night, the Serbs proclaimed
a breakaway republic inside Bosnia,
and today their leader,
Radovan Karadzic said
they'd have to make
their Serbian state,
whatever the cost may be.
There is chaos and anarchy,
no functioning central authority
and the United Nations
headquartered here is apparently
powerless to intervene.
What remains of the
Bosnian government has declared
a state of war.
General Ratko Mladic.
He is the scourge of Sarajevo,
the Chief Warrior of the Serbs.
He's called Ratko Mladic.
He is a man who has no doubts,
only a total assurance
that he's right, the world wrong,
and that his people
have been slandered.
Well, General Mladic is my eighth
client in front of the tribunal.
And it's obvious this is
the most important case
in my career.
My memories from the war were,
of course, horrible.
I had parents in Doboj.
It was Serb-held territory...
..but bombed and shelled every day.
My parents were protected
by General Mladic and his soldiers.
And he would tell me, always,
"Your parents live in Doboj
"thanks to me."
We, of course, would have preferred
having the Mladic's trial starting
already many, many years before.
And you are for sure right when
he arrived in The Hague last year,
his health situation
was far from perfect.
It is very, very difficult
to measure the extreme importance
of the arrest of Mladic.
We were looking
for him for 16 years.
When he arrived, it was a few days
after his last stroke.
He arrived as a very sick man.
Today, I think his situation
is much, much better,
but we will see what happens.
We have a lot of staff working
extremely hard to make sure
that this case can advance
as fast as possible.
Hey, good afternoon. I wanted
to just have a quick meeting today,
to kind of just touch base
on the preparation.
Things are starting
to pick up speed.
The two senior trial attorneys
were very experienced.
They have been working
at this tribunal for many,
many years. Dermot is somehow the
coordinator, the organiser,
and Peter McCloskey, we call him
sometimes, "Mr Srebrenica",
because he has done
a number of Srebrenica cases.
The sound is very important on this
one, which sounds perfect.
I am up pretty much at maximum.
That's where we want to be. OK.
Zoran is helping me with the clip
of a Muslim man, is it Ramo?
Ramo. Ramo Osmanovic.
He's calling...
The Serbs are making him call
to bring other Muslims
out of the woods and he is calling
his son, Nermin.
Can you check Nermin and his father,
where they were found?
Can you imagine how hard
it is to call your son
and then they kill your son?
They promise you that they will
save them, cos if they surrender
they would be all safe.
So, he's calling his son,
his son came, and...
Bye.
I was just asking the investigator
to give me the details of which mass
grave they were found in,
so that I can tell the court that.
If I watch too much of it, I...
You know, I still get...
It gets to you.
I got here in the fall of 1996.
And I was meeting survivors
at the refugee camps
and getting to know them, and
hearing their stories.
At the same time,
on the same missions,
I was with the investigator
and we would travel
into the Republika Srpska,
with borrowed shovels from the local
police and start digging
in this disturbed soil,
because we suspected mass
graves and, sure enough,
every time we found
one of these places,
we found body remains,
which were, of course,
and we understood,
the loved ones of the people
we had interviewed
the day before.
I've been so close to this work
for so long and so close
to the victims, it becomes rather
difficult to deal with the carnage.
There is a certain darkness
that comes over me when this thing
starts, especially when
the victims are here.
A human tragedy is unfolding in the
eastern enclave of Srebrenica.
Bosnian-Serb infantry have
effectively outmanoeuvred
the UN and taken
control of the town.
Resistance was reported
to be minimal.
The town was supposed
to be a safe haven,
protected by the moral and military
force of the world community
in the shape of the UN.
There are hundreds
and hundreds of people,
around probably 20,000
or more surrounding
the Dutch Battalion compound and
everybody is fleeing the city.
After overrunning Srebrenica town,
the Serbs surrounded the UN base
nearby at Potocari, where up to
40,000 refugees have gathered.
The Bosnian Serb Commander
in Chief, General Ratko Mladic
justified the attack,
stating it was to rout Muslim
terrorists and to
demilitarise the enclave.
An operation, he added,
that the UN had failed to complete.
A senior UN official here today said
that there was nothing the UN can do
at the moment, short of going to war
with the Bosnian Serbs
and that is very much
not on the agenda.
This case involves two
horrendous crimes.
The forced movement
of the Muslim population,
together with the mass murder
of thousands of Bosnian men
and boys, all amounting
to the elimination of the Muslim
population from Srebrenica
in genocide.
Mladic was present in Potocari
on 12th and 13th of July,
while the VRS began the process
of putting the women and children
on buses to
Muslim-controlled territory,
and separating and holding the
Muslim men and boys for execution.
The part where I am
asking you questions,
I think, it is going to seem
actually very short,
surprisingly, and I think
that you've probably been told
this already, but Mladic will also
be in the courtroom,
sitting up behind his lawyers.
We hope that he stays
quiet and listens,
because he should hear
what you have to say.
The reason we're calling Saliha
Osmanovic is because she decided
on the 11th of July that she had
to leave with her family
from Srebrenica, otherwise,
she would be killed by the Serbs.
You know, this is
the ethnic cleansing,
this is the "forcible transfer"
count.
And so, that is the first thing
we bring out with her.
Her situation was,
that all of a sudden,
it is not safe for us
to be in our home any more.
OK, there's fleeing the fighting,
which is normal, and we'd all do
that when the shells started.
Was there anything indicated
in her mind, anything else besides
just fleeing shells falling?
Well, it's not just shells falling,
it's a sense of being,
what she communicated, at least,
was, "I, as a Muslim,
"I am not going to be safe here."
Not just I might get caught
in some random crossfire,
she actually said, "Yeah,
it was safe if you wanted
"to get your throat slit."
Dobro jutro! How are you doing?
Kako ste? Kako ste,
I can do that too.
OK. I'll see you in there in
a minute.
TRANSLATOR INTERPRETS
OK?
Mrs Osmanovic, do you recognise
the man that is featured
in that video?
SHE CRIES
You state that you went to Potocari
on the 11th of July.
Did you go to Potocari
from the town of Srebrenica?
Up until the moment that you boarded
the bus in Potocari,
do you feel like you could
have stayed in Srebrenica
if you wanted to?
What is being described
as deportation by the prosecution
in relation to Srebrenica,
was a humanitarian evacuation
that was agreed to by all sides.
My goal, with this witness, is to
see if I can link up certain parts
of her written testimony to video
footage that we have of the actual
events that she seems
to be describing.
We hope to show our client,
General Mladic,
acting in a very humane light,
providing food and water to the
civilians
that were located there.
The demeanour of General Mladic,
is it similar to or different
from the demeanour of General Mladic
during the encounter
that you remember with him?
Madam, you mention that there was
water and chocolates being handed
out, was there also bread being
handed out by the VRS soldiers?
Mrs Osmanovic, the chamber
understands that being taken back
to the events must be emotional for
you, we appreciate that you came.
You may now follow the usher.
I don't see how you did. You were
just wonderful. Thank you.
Danny really shook her.
Although she was a victim and when
you have a victim in front of you,
you have to deal with the victim,
very, very nicely, very softly.
But still he was capable
of shaking her.
We have the instruction
from the general to say sorry
to a victim, and I never do that.
It's not my job.
He instructs me that, no.
My job is to cross-examine.
I am a lawyer, I cross-examine.
If you want to apologise,
write a letter.
Hundreds of bodies believed
to have been killed by Serb forces
have been found in a mass grave
in Bosnia, in the Prijedor area.
They knew this grave existed
for years, but
Bosnian Serb witnesses kept silent
about its location until...
The ghosts of the missing
still haunt the villages here
and the graveyards still wait for
the dead.
This discovery could bring an end
to that waiting and bring evidence
of war crimes
that can no longer be hidden.
So once you've stripped
off the top layer of earth,
did you, at that stage,
know that there were likely
to be bodies there? We could see
the changes... In the, in the
earth?
We need to strip this brown soil
to get to this yellow...
Grey clay, yes.
And because,
air couldn't get through that clay,
bodies are well preserved.
And do the pathologists think
that because of that soft tissue,
that they can make findings
about cause of death?
Exactly. OK. And a lot of this was
organised by the army itself?
Army and the police. The army and
the police. And the local police.
Prijedor was the first place
to be ethnically cleansed
with vicious Serb atrocities.
We're very upset to see outright
murder, burning people to death
in their own homes,
dragging them out into the street
and shooting them
at point blank range.
Omarska concentration camp,
ethnic cleansing at its
most graphic.
Thousands of Muslims in scenes
chillingly reminiscent
of the Holocaust.
And you can see
the different states. Yeah.
You can see that one there.
That'll be solid. Yeah.
What kinds of injuries are you
finding,
the ones that you can
determine an injury?
Back of the head or...?
There's a skull over there,
which, as you can see,
is being reconstructed.
And all this shattering is typical
of high velocity injury.
Once it's all put together,
we've got quite a lot
of good evidence,
you can...we can see from it.
You can see the tragedy of it,
when you look around,
I mean, it's clear
that these are not soldiers,
these are women, there are even some
children over there.
This is just an outrage
that these people were killed
in the way that they were killed,
and dumped in the site
that they were dumped.
In terms of the case,
it's so important.
Because in terms of proving
that they were murdered by people
that are accountable to Mladic,
we need to have that evidence.
So, do you find,
as a military person,
General Mladic's presence
at this meeting, do you find
that to be an exercise of command?
Yes, sir. He's the commander
of the Army of the Republika Srpska.
Everything that he does
or everything that he does not
do as the commander is
an exercise of command.
He's not pulling the trigger,
we don't have him standing
at any execution site,
but we have to show
that he is in command
of the troops that are doing it
and he's fully aware
of what is going on and,
in fact, ordered it and began
the whole process,
which the evidence is very clear on.
General Dannatt, from a purely
military perspective,
is General Mladic responsible
for the conduct of his
subordinates in Srebrenica?
Well, it's clear to me
that he exercised a large measure
of personal control
as to what was going on.
He was known to be a big character,
and therefore what he said
and what he ordered,
people were likely to do.
Can you describe please
how the Serb soldiers spoke
to you and the other prisoners?
Turning specifically to the time
period of the executions
in the field, can you tell us
if you heard any exchanges
between wounded men and the Serb
soldiers who had been shooting them?
Mr Nikolic, I would like to ask
you how you feel about
having participated in these events?
Mr Kenjic was called to confirm
the alibi that explains
the movements of General Mladic
from the 14th of July
until 17th of July 1995...
..while Srebrenica
killings happened,
and through this witness we want to,
among other things,
prove and explain that General
Mladic has nothing to do
with those killings.
Mr Kenjic drove Mr Mladic
from Srebrenica to Belgrade
on the 14th. We have meetings that
he had with internationalists,
we have his visit to his
daughter's grave on the 15th,
we have the 16th a wedding,
a visit to a military medical
academy, and we have his
return to the 17th.
Mr Mladic did not have any
means of communication.
He was outside the area
and, by Serbian military law
at that time, he was not in command.
I am 100% sure that there is nothing
that can touch that alibi.
Thank you, Mr Stajanovic.
Mr Kenjic, you'll now be
cross-examined by Mr McCloskey.
Good morning, Mr Kenjic.
As you sit here now,
do you remember, on that day,
the afternoon of 14 July,
which route you actually took?
Were you aware, at the time,
large numbers of Muslim soldiers
and civilians were
fleeing the Srebrenica enclave
and had crossed that road,
and were still in those woods
all around that area
where you're driving?
As you drove past
the Nova Kasaba area,
did you see any large pits being dug
near the side of the road?
No.
At the time that you were in
Konjevic Polje with General Mladic,
did you hear any information
that there were hundreds
and hundreds of dead and dying
Muslims at the Kravica warehouse
at that time?
So, did you have any information
about the other prisoners,
roughly 800 to a thousand,
at the nearby Petkovci school,
the nearby Rocevic school,
the Pilica cultural centre,
and the Kula school?
Did you hear about any of
those thousands of prisoners
that were in those schools
at the time you're driving
by that area?
Nothing further, Mr President.
Thank you.
This guy drove Mladic right
through the heart of darkness,
right past or near
the significant mass murder sites
and gravesites.
That's a very good reminder
that Mladic is in the centre
of things, both as a commander
and as a person on the ground.
As an alibi witness,
you generally...
..that's a pretty tough alibi.
NEWS REPORTER: To be on the wrong
side of the ethnic front line
in Bosnia is a terrifying
experience, whoever you are.
These people are Serbs, fleeing,
they say, for their lives.
They said they wanted to escape
to friendly territory because Serbs
in a village near them had been
massacred by Muslim troops...
Today, hundreds of Serbs attended
a funeral for 39 of their men
and women in a village seized
by the Muslims earlier this year,
recaptured by the Serbs last week...
APPLAUSE
FOLK MUSIC PLAYS
CANNON FIRES
EXCITED SHOUTS AND CHEERS
For me, he is a hero firstly
because he is my dad.
Even for small things in life,
he was so dedicated that you should
do something right, never lie.
He despised lies.
He always told me,
"You should tell me the truth,
"nevertheless how difficult the
truth is, because if you lied to me,
"I will not know how to help you."
Maybe we have a
different temperament.
I am more calm than he is.
He is a very good person, but he can
explode, he can burst.
But values I openly declare
are his values.
I am sorry for every victim,
but I cannot accept his guilt.
I cannot accept what
I don't believe is true,
if I believe it,
then I would accept it,
but I can't accept it,
because the other side has a need
for me to do it.
It a real joke to ask
from us to be prepared.
It's not possible.
Simply not possible.
And I don't think it's good example
for any kind of justice,
let alone international justice.
We probably need at least as many
lawyers as the prosecution has.
We need as many investigators.
We have only a couple of them.
And the prosecution
has the whole system.
It is a real fight
in between David and Goliath.
That's exactly what I was afraid
of before we came here.
That we might have many good talks,
but no witnesses.
My humble opinion is that,
at this moment, Bosnia does not need
shows for public as Tomasica.
Because it's just a show.
And it's just prolongation
of Bosnian agony.
We should bury our dead,
and we should move forward.
And having wounds reopened
all the time
cannot help reconciliation.
These are killing fields.
In World War II? Yes. Yes.
To understand Bosnia,
it's conflict from the '90s,
you have to know what happened
during the World War, the second.
If you do not understand Jasenovac,
where we are here now,
you cannot understand
the conflict in Bosnia.
Every single family lost its member
due to that genocide committed
against Serbian people.
Eye for an eye is not allowed
as a defence in front
of this tribunal.
But there was revenge.
And you could not control everybody
who was armed during the war,
so it was not something that
you could blame General Mladic
and to blame Serbian leadership,
that it was organised.
Tomasica can be an excellent
example, actually, of revenge.
It can be an excellent
example of continuation
of this Bosnian bloody story.
It happens in this area.
And it happened before.
And I'm afraid that it could happen
in the future. I hope not.
Welcome, everybody, to the 80th week
of the Mladic trial.
Officially on the record
we are on the 333rd day.
In terms of events
in the trial, where is...
There he is, Ed filed
the Tomasica motion last week,
right on schedule. Thank you very
much for doing that.
The most significant addition since
we've had the last team meeting
is that Alan Tieger is here.
It's of course my
pleasure to be on board.
I simply look forward to working
with each one of you.
I hope to meet with all...
It's an extraordinary responsibility
and professional privilege to lead
this team for this case at this
point in the tribunal's existence.
My parents were both survivors
whose, virtually, entire families
were murdered during the Holocaust.
And no...
No survivor truly escapes that.
I could see the visible effects
of those crimes every day.
And I certainly felt that when I
met and worked with those victims
in Prijedor.
Mladic is charged with seven
different massacres that took place
in about a six-day period in
Prijedor municipality
in late July 1992.
More than 1000 people in Prijedor
went missing during the course
of about those six days.
Nobody's ever been convicted
of genocide here,
for what happened in 1992.
In Prijedor, or anywhere else.
This is the last trial here,
so it is the last opportunity.
And I think all of us feel some
sense of historical obligation
to make sure that it's recorded
here what happened.
And General Mladic's
responsibility for it.
The cleansing campaign
reached its most brutal apex
in Prijedor municipality.
What you see on this next slide
is those villages which are most
relevant to cleansing
campaign in Prijedor.
As you see, many of the communities
by 1993 genuinely,
literally,
chillingly no longer existed.
Mr Hanson, were you called
upon to assist in the exhumation
of the Tomasica site in 2013?
Yes, I was.
And did it reveal the presence of
graves, and, if so, how many?
Yes. Three separate graves.
Were you are able to determine
how much time may have transpired
between the deposits of bodies?
Exact timings, no.
However, the bodies
were very well preserved.
This is consistent with a burial
quite soon after death.
Sir, what did you observe
as the most frequent cause of death?
I found that the vast majority
of the people in this gravesite
had been shot. A surprisingly high
number of shots were to the head.
A very common finding
was a bullet wound,
a bullet injury
to the back of the head.
What can you tell us
about the clothes found
on the bodies exhumed from Tomasica?
The clothing was just
ordinary clothing.
Some people had suit jackets,
some people had work jackets,
or dungarees. But it was mostly
sort of casual clothes.
When, in a community like Prijedor,
more than 1,500 people are murdered
in a short time, thousands
and thousands more starved,
degraded, abused, humiliated,
tormented, when most of their homes
are destroyed, when their mosques
are reduced to rubble,
and when they are scattered
to an impoverished exile...
..the intent to destroy that
community
and prevented from reconstituting
itself is unmistakable.
And the word for those crimes
with that intent, is "genocide".
You had occasion to meet
with General Mladic in Prijedor
answer, "No, I never met
the general, never saw him
"at any meeting that I attended,
nor did I hear from anyone else
"that he had been in Prijedor."
Mr Marjanovic, you will now
be cross-examined by Mr Traldi.
Mr Traldi is counsel
for the prosecution.
Thanks, Mr President.
Good morning, sir.
Can we have 65 to 31041?
Do you recognise the people in
this photograph?
Who is the man on the far right,
looking away from the camera?
And the person immediately
to your right hand,
with the moustache, who's that?
The man next to him, in the tie?
And the man next to him
come on the far left?
All four of you worked at RZR
Ljubija before the war, right?
You and Mr Balaban were Serbs,
while Mr Paunovic and Mr Zahirovic
were Muslims?
Now, Mr Paunovic and Mr Zahirovic,
have you ever seen either of them
after the war?
Did he know what was
happening in Prijedor?
Yeah, of course.
It's very hard to start with 50,000
Muslims in your municipality,
wind up with six a couple
of months later, 6,000,
and then virtually none by the end
of the war, and miss that.
It's too large a change
in the composition of the people
you interact with every day.
And he would have been
in downtown Prijedor,
where he lived, when one
of the neighbourhoods there,
Stari Grad,
was destroyed by the VRS.
He would have been in downtown
Prijedor, where he lived,
when the Room 3 massacre
at Keraterm occurred.
Of course he knew crimes
were being committed, yeah.
Nobody could have missed that.
Whether he knew about
this grave specifically...
If he didn't, it would have required
a wilful attempt to avoid knowing
what was being done on his property.
On his company's property.
The evidence of genocide presented
in this courtroom for the last four
and a half years was clear,
comprehensive and unassailable.
We have Mladic in the dock,
answering for his crimes.
History will judge if justice
was done and seen to be done.
The defence does not deny
that unfortunate crimes occurred.
But those in no way can be connected
to General Ratko Mladic.
There is no credible evidence
linking General Mladic's presence
to any of the alleged
killing or execution sites.
We should all agree that he sits
here innocent before us right now.
The time has come for General Mladic
to be held accountable
for those crimes against each
of his victims and the communities
he destroyed.
It would be an affront to justice
to impose any sentence other
than the most severe
available under law.
We're returning now to the trial
of...
We're back live now, in the Hague.
The United Nations
War Crimes Tribunal...
An international war
crimes court in the Hague
is delivering its verdict...
You're watching continuous coverage
of the verdict in the trial...
Just to remind you that
General Ratko Mladic had asked
for a bathroom break, effectively,
about 35 minutes ago.
We're still trying to assess
exactly what is going on here.
We assume this
is just a temporary pause.
The Bosnian TV reported
that apparently he had some medical
issues and they are
doing the medical checks.
If he has a medical thing now,
it's not a coincidence. Is it?
He turned red in his face, you know?
Usually when he turns red
in his face, this is a sign
that his blood pressure is high.
And for him, this is
a life-threatening situation.
OK, the medical officer wanted
to speak to the cardiologist,
but now it seems like
we're going to be resuming.
Mr Mladic's blood pressure was read
three times during the break.
The first reading,
I believe, is 175/96.
The second reading,
done by a nurse, was 180/80.
According to both
the American Heart Association
and the United Kingdom
Cardiovascular Association,
that is called hypertensive crisis.
Under those circumstances,
the defence asks that your honours
either halt these proceedings,
or we waive reading of the summary
and pronounce your judgment,
so we can lessen the risk of further
harm to Mr Mladic's health.
Mr Ivetic, the doctor's advice we
got is that the situation is not
such that medical reasons
would prevent us from continuing.
Mr Mladic wants to consult with
counsel, I take it?
If he does it in such a way that
no-one can hear your voice,
and sit down, please.
Mr Mladic, sit...
Mr...
Mr Mladic, if you could...
Curtains down. Mr Mladic will be
removed from the courtroom.
OK. It goes on.
Having summarised its findings,
the chamber will now
give its verdict.
The chamber finds Ratko Mladic
not guilty of count one, genocide.
Guilty as a member of various joint
criminal enterprises
of the following counts.
Count two, Srebrenica, genocide.
Count three, persecution,
a crime against humanity.
Count four, extermination...
The judgment, the verdict
in the case of Ratko Mladic,
the former general of
the Bosnian Serb forces,
has just been handed down.
He was found guilty of ten of the
11 charges against him,
on one charge of genocide
he was found not guilty.
The crimes committed
rank among the most heinous known
to humankind, and include
genocide and extermination
as a crime against humanity.
For having committed these crimes,
the chamber sentences
Mr Ratko Mladic
to life imprisonment.
Yes.
Well done. Well, guys, let's be
happy for a moment.
I think that's a great result.
A great team effort.
The word "life" keeps resonating in
my head.
And had there been anything but
that, I would have been very angry.
After that amazing long road,
to hear that word...
Life, life.
That tells the whole story.
Now I'm ready to quibble
about the, er...
About what? About count one.
The way I understood
it was it was just a substantiality
away from a genocide finding.
They didn't find that it met
all the legal elements for genocide.
But they recognised the effect
of the ethnic cleansing
campaign in Prijedor.
Guys, many, many thanks.
We are the winning team.
The defence team considers
this judgment to be erroneous
and there will be an appeal.
And we believe that the appeal
will correct the errors
of the trial chamber.
We saw each other 5-10
minutes after the verdict.
My father, he said
this is all a lie.
So we refuse this sentence.
This is a great injustice,
done to Serbian people
in the first place.
And my father was a symbol
of this fight for freedom
of Serbian people.
To this day, not a single Serbian
victim was protected.
Nobody was ever accused of it.
And you're asking Serbs
whether they accept this tribunal
as impartial? No, they don't.
They will never do so.
Over the last couple of hours,
we heard a detailed reassessment
of the evidence that had been heard
inside this court behind me.
Evidence which, at times,
magnified the brutality of some
of General Ratko Mladic's crimes.
Mladic's crimes have now
been recorded in history.
During his trial, the court heard
from 4,500 people who bore witness
to the killings he ordered.
It took a quarter of a century
for their voices to be heard,
for their dead
to receive some justice.
So, what do you think,
how do you feel with the verdict?
I am very happy now.
Is it over?
Not really. But I'm happy.
Is it justice? Yes.