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War Crimes Suspect Faces Massacre Survivor

The man accused of the worst war crimes in Europe since 1945 has faced one of the survivors of a massacre he is accused of masterminding.

The former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic was confronted in court as war crimes prosecutors opened their case against him in the Hague.

Elevedin Pasic was just 14 when Serbian troops shelled his home in a village in Northern Bosnia. Now in his thirties, he repeatedly broke down and wept as he told the court how his family became victims of brutal ethnic conflict.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia fell silent as Mr Pasic told how he and his father joined a group trying to escape to safety in 1992.

In moving scenes, he described how they travelled through the night and were repeatedly shot at by Serb forces. Only stopping to remove his coat, he said, had prevented him and his father from being among those at the front of the group who walked straight into a Serbian minefield.

Mr Pasic said they surrendered to the Serbs shortly after but became separated. The court heard his father was among a group of 150 Muslims massacred shortly afterwards at a school in Grabovica.

At one point in the hearing, 70-year-old Mladic appeared to wipe his eyes with a tissue as Mr Pasic wept. The trial against him resumed after being suspended almost immediately after starting two months ago because of a clerical error.

Mladic faces a total of 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. They include charges relating to the Srebrenica massacre in north eastern Bosnia in 1995. It was supposed to be a UN safe-haven but was over-run by Serb forces, leaving almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys dead.

He is also accused in connection with the siege of Sarajevo where 44 months of shelling and sniping killed 10,000 people.

At the same time that the prosecution was beginning, thousands lined the streets of Sarajevo to pay their respects to the remains of 520 victims of the Srebrenica massacre who will be buried on the 17th anniversary of the atrocity.

Three trucks loaded with 520 coffins passed through Sarajevo on their way to the Potocari cemetery near Srebrenica where they will be buried on Wednesday.

“Our children are returning to where they left from in 1995. Unfortunately, they are not alive,” Munira Subasic, who heads an organisation of women of Srebrenica whose husbands and sons were killed, said as she watched the vehicles.

Mladic was arrested in northeastern Serbia last year after some 16 years on the run and subsequently moved to The Hague. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. If found guilty, he could face life in prison.

SOURCE:YAHOO! NEWS

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