War crimes arrests - Serbia and Rwanda

Supporters of suspected war criminal, Ratko Mladic, are due to march in Belgrade today to try to stop him being extradited to the Hague to face trial.   The former Bosnian Serb army chief is accused of being responsible for the murder of about 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, as well as other crimes. 

Serbia’s failure to arrest Gen Mladic for 16 years means that he is now aged 69, and his lawyers have been trying to resist having him handed over to the court on grounds of ill health.    An appeal will be heard tomorrow.    Meanwhile, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor says that anyone who helped to shield Gen Mladic from justice could find themselves in serious trouble.

The general’s political boss, Radavan Karadzic, is already awaiting trial at the Hague after being arrested in 2008.    The former Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, died during his trial in 2006.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most notorious leaders of the Rwandan Hutu militia during the 1994 genocide has been arrested.   Bernard Munyagishari was wanted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Kosovo war crimes

A mass grave thought to contain the bodies of about 250 Kosovo Albanians has been found just over the border in Serbia. Officials said a building appeared to have been erected over the bodies to try to hide them.

In 2001, the bodies of more than 800 Kosovo Albanians were found at a number of sites in Serbia, some of them inside police compounds. Altogether, more than 11,000 people died in the fighting in Kosovo – mostly Albanians, though 2,300 were ethnic Serbs. Another 1,800 people are still missing.

A former top Serbian police official Vlastimir Djordjevic is on trial before the UN’s war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, accused of being involved in the murders of hundreds of ethnic Albanians. He was a close associate of Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while still on trial for war crimes.

The former Serb military commander, Ratko Mladic, remains at large. (See also my blog of October 16.)