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Former Bosnian Serb general allowed to visit daughter's grave ahead of flight to Netherlands and Scheveningen prison
Ratko Mladic was flown to the Netherlands on Tuesday night to face charges at The Hague war crimes tribunal for his role in the killing of thousands of Muslims in the Bosnian war after an emotional final day in Serbia.
The former Bosnian Serb general was flown into Rotterdam airport on a small Serbian government jet and then transferred by helicopter to a 15 sq metre cell in a special unit in Scheveningen prison, a brick castle-like jail in a leafy suburb of The Hague yards from the North Sea coast.
He swept into a side entrance in a police cavalcade under flashing blue lights, avoiding most of the hundreds of onlookers including family members of Mladic's alleged victims and Serbian nationalist supporters of the war crimes suspect. Also looking on were several Dutch army veterans who were part of the UN peacekeeping force which was unable to stop the massacre of 7,500 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, for which Mladic faces charges of genocide.
"I feel a lot of traumas coming back," said Dijana Zupanovic, 46, a Croatian who said Mladic's forces had killed her 20-year old brother.
"It is unbelievable he is here. It is good to see him in Holland, because I have seen many dead people because of him," said René Jagt, 37, a private in the Dutch peacekeeping force at Srebrenica.
"For people who have lost their husbands and children, this is a big moment."
"In the detention unit, he will be introduced to the regulations and the rules of the unit and of the tribunal, he will be give a copy of the indictment and then a medical examination," said Nerma Jelacic, the spokeswoman for the International criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
"He will be held in a isolation cell on his own for at least few days so that his assimilation can be monitored, and after that he will be in a cell in one of the three wings of the detention unit."
After the first few days, Mladic will be able to mix with the prison's other 36 war crimes defendants of various nationalities, including other Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. They have an exercise yard, computers, televisions, art classes and even massage on request.
The tribunal's prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, will give a statement on Wednesday, and Mladic is expected to appear before judges by Friday to hear his indictment for the worst crimes committed in Europe since the Nazi era.
Before Mladic left Belgrade, he was granted a parting wish – insistently repeated from the time of his arrest – to visit the grave of his daughter, Ana, who killed herself in 1994 with his favourite revolver.
Her motive was reportedly despair at her father's role in the Bosnian slaughter but if she left a note it was never made public. Mladic, who always insisted she had been killed by his enemies, was allowed to linger for 10 minutes, lighting a candle at the black granite grave in a Belgrade cemetery before being driven away in an armoured police motorcade.
The visit angered some of the relatives of the Bosnian dead. Kadira Gabeljic, whose husband and two sons were killed in the Srebrenica slaughter, told the Associated Press: "He was allowed to do it, and I am still searching for my children for the past 16 years, ever since Srebrenica happened.
"My husband had been found, but what about my children? I will wait for years. I might even die before their complete remains are found."
After a 16-year manhunt, Mladic's journey from Balkan fugitive to prisoner in the Netherlands unfolded at remarkable speed.
The 69-year-old former Yugoslav officerwas arrested at his cousin's house in a northern Serbian village on Thursday and faced an extradition hearing the same night. His lawyer, Milos Saljic, insisted he was not well enough physically or mentally to stand trial, and tried to slow the proceedings by sending his appeal by post at the last possible moment on Monday, but Serbia's war crimes court rejected it almost as soon as it arrived on Tuesday.
According to Saljic, the ex-general's wife and sister arrived for a tearful farewell in the early afternoon, bringing a large suitcase of clothes. By the evening, he was on a flight to The Hague.
At his first appearance at the tribunal, Mladic will hear the charges against him, for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In particular, he is charged with overseeing the execution of thousands of Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica, whose bodies were found in mass graves after his troops had overrun the eastern Bosnian town. He is also held responsible for the three-year siege of Sarajevo, during which about 10,000 of the Bosnian capital's residents were killed.
Mladic will have 30 days to decide how to plead but there could be many months of preparations before the trial begins.
Ultra-nationalists staged rallies in Belgrade and at Mladic's childhood home in eastern Bosnia but they were easily contained and did nothing to deflect the determination of Serbia's president, Boris Tadic, to deliver Mladic to The Hague and thus remove the most serious obstacle to Serbia's eventual EU membership.
Tadic has also pledged to go after the last Serb war crimes suspect still at large, Goran Hadzic, as well as the suspected network of followers and state officials thought to have sustained and concealed Mladic in his 16 years on the run.
There had been fears that Mladic's arrest might trigger a dangerous backlash among Serb officers with the same Yugoslav army roots, but the demonstrations were thinner and less fiery that those which greeted the arrest of the Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadzic, three years ago.
The flame of ultra Serb nationalism appears to be guttering, although it could be replaced with a quieter long-lasting resentment. Rasim Ljajic, one of Tadic's ministers, has acknowledged that the government could be voted out at the next elections as a result of Mladic's extradition.
GUARDIAN
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