A Question of Justice: What I Learned from Watching Ratko Mladic’s Trial

When news broke that Ratko Mladic had died in UN detention in The Hague, the headlines brought back the familiar images of the 1990s: the “Butcher of Bosnia”, the war criminal, the commander who became synonymous with the Srebrenica genocide. For me, however, his death brought back a different image: an older man sitting a few metres away from me in a courtroom, stripped of his uniform and subjected to the quiet and slow rhythm of international criminal procedure. My encounter with Mladic began not behind the bench but behind the glass of the public gallery in 2015. I was studying for a master’s degree in public international law and went to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, excited to see a trial that until then I had known mostly through lectures, books and documentaries. Subscribe to Balkan Insight Premium to read the full article. Please login to your account below if you are already a Premium Subscriber. Buy Premium Subscription Our Premium Service gives you full access to all content published on BalkanInsight.com, including analyses, investigations, comments, interviews and more. Choose your subscription today and get unparalleled in-depth coverage of the Southern and Eastern Europe. Buy Premium Subscription If you have trouble logging in or any other questions regarding you account, please contact us