What the arrest of Ratko Mladic means

inrenational crisis group

Sabine Freizer, CNN  |   26 May 2011

Sixteen years after the end of the war in Bosnia, the arrest of one of its biggest criminals is not only a great day for international justice and the conflict's victims, but the opportunity for the Balkans to finally move past its dark history.
Thousands of people were slaughtered at the hands of General Ratko Mladic, who is accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of the laws of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. That he was hiding all this time in Serbia was a constant reminder of injustice and impunity. Mladic was a huge barrier to reconciliation between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, even as an impotent fugitive. During the 1990s, a series of regional wars, often falling along ethnic lines, splintered Yugoslavia into today’s Balkan states. In what is now known as Bosnia, Serbian soldiers backed by Belgrade, sieged the city of Sarajevo and fought against both Bosnian Muslims and Croats. The war - which lasted from 1992 to 1995 - was marked by ethnic cleansing and mass atrocities, perhaps the most famous being the Srebrenica massacre, where Serbian forces led by Mladic killed 8,000 Muslim men and boys in just five days....more....

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http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/europe/balkans/serbia/freizer-what-the-arrest-of-ratko-mladic-means.aspx