Ratko Mladić, the former commander of the Main Staff of the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and a convicted war criminal, died in The Hague at the age of 84. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws and customs of war. His conviction was confirmed in 2021 by the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. Mladić was found guilty, among other things, of the genocide committed in Srebrenica in 1995, including the persecution, extermination, murders, and forced displacement of civilians, as well as a campaign of shelling and sniper attacks against Sarajevo residents. After news of his death, journalist Djena Karup Drusko recalled the first day of his trial in The Hague, which she attended from close proximity. Drusko described how she sat in the front row reserved for journalists, separated from Mladić by only glass. For her, it was a significant moment. "The trial of the commander of the VRS, after so many years of his hiding and fleeing, and after everything he did in Bosnia and Herzegovina," she wrote on social media. During the presentation of the indictment by prosecutor Dermot Groome, Drusko observed Mladić's reactions, curious about how he would behave facing charges for crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to her account, Mladić listened coldly, occasionally glancing around the courtroom. At one point, their eyes met. "I didn't want to look away, not before such a criminal," she wrote. The situation changed when the prosecutor began speaking about Srebrenica. In the audience, according to Drusko, there were murmurs, sighs, and crying. She claims Mladić looked coldly at the public and cynically traced his throat with his finger, a gesture interpreted by those present as a simulation of killing. Among the victims and their families, intense reactions followed, leading the judge to interrupt the proceedings and declare a recess. "We stood up to leave. Mladić stood up and headed towards the exit, so we were only a few steps apart. He pointed his finger at me and raised his thumb," Drusko recalled. She said she was completely shocked by this encounter. "A man who had just minutes ago shown the victims of Srebrenica how he would kill them again," she wrote, adding that she was aware that any reaction of hers could be perceived as disrespect for the court and that she could have been expelled from the courtroom. "But I couldn't get over it," Drusko wrote. Drusko then described what she did after meeting Mladić. She moved closer to Vlada Marić, who was standing beside her, to be out of the judges' sight, and then showed Mladić the middle finger. "It was my very clear message of how much I despised him. His lawyers saw it immediately and reacted right away, complaining to the judges. Foreign journalists also realized something had happened and approached to ask what had occurred. Having enough journalistic experience, I said nothing was happening. I grabbed Vlada’s hand and quickly left. That day, I wasn’t supposed to be the news. The news was the start of the trial of Ratko Mladić," Drusko wrote. Mladić's trial began in May 2012, and the first-instance judgment by the ICTY was delivered on November 22, 2017. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals confirmed the life sentence and key conclusions of the first-instance judgment in 2021. The court determined his responsibility for a series of crimes committed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the genocide in Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995. Mladić had evaded capture for years after the war. He was arrested in Serbia in May 2011 and then transferred to The Hague. Now, he is buried in Serbia. Jelena Guskova, a Russian historian and long-time researcher of the Balkans, has spent decades studying the region and turned one of the greatest war criminals of the 20th century into almost a mythical figure. Guskova, a member of the controversial Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republika Srpska, and director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Balkan Crisis at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has written two books about Mladić. She visited him multiple times in The Hague, spoke with him, and recorded his memories. Today, she speaks about him in terms that are hard to see as neutral historical accounts. For her, Mladić is a "legendary Serbian warrior," a "great military leader, top professional, and honorable officer," a "great strategist and creator of all Serb victories in BH." Monstrum? Not for Guskova. Mladić and his deeds are political facts, with which we share a 1,000-kilometer border. Then comes the sentence that perhaps best shows the depth of this fascination: "Happy are those who personally knew Ratko Mladić, talked to him, learned from him, and served under his command. Eternal glory to the hero Ratko Mladić! Eternal memory." Guskova even claimed earlier that "all of Russia considers Mladić a hero" and "a very honorable officer and military leader." When talking about Srebrenica, her views move toward denying the genocide. And here it is no longer just about a historian who has a different view of the war and rejects the verdicts of The Hague. It is about a woman who has turned an indicted war criminal into a hero, his actions into military glory, and his biography into a myth. The problem is not that Guskova has the right to an opinion. The problem is that behind this opinion stand Mladić's victims who disappear from her mythological story. Because when talking about Mladić, and there is no Srebrenica, no murdered, no families still searching for the remains of their dearest, then it is no longer a story about history. It is a story about mythology and sick fascination, writes Avaz, and Slobodna Dalmacija reports.
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