Serbia has no alternative to arresting fugitive General Ratko Mladic to prove its cooperation with an international war crimes tribunal, the prosecutor of the UN court said on Tuesday.
"Priority is still the arrest of two remaining fugitives, among them Mladic," Serge Brammertz said in Srebrenica, site of the 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Muslims by the Bosnian Serbs.
"I mentioned in the last report and will also mention in the next report that the arrest of the remaining two fugitives Mladic and (Goran) Hadzic is at the centre of cooperation and there can be no alternative to their arrest."
Hadzic was political leader of Serbs in Croatia during the 1991-1995 war there. Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995 when they took over the eastern enclave of Srebrenica that had been put under UN protection. The slaughter that followed was Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.
Mladic went underground about a decade ago, but casts a large shadow over Serbia because the Balkan country's future progress towards European Union membership is contingent upon Belgrade's full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague.
Brammertz's report to the UN Security Council in June will provide a key signal to EU states as they mull whether to proceed on Belgrade's December application for membership.
"Because of the crimes that were allegedly committed by General Mladic, the tribunal was set up," the Belgian prosecutor said at the Srebrenica memorial where he met victims' relatives.
Brammertz was visiting Srebrenica for the first time since he took the job in 2008. Accompanied by mothers who lost relatives, he walked among the rows of white Islamic tombstones at the cemetery for victims near the town.
Authorities are still finding remains of some victims in unmarked mass graves. So far, 3,749 victims have been buried, and another 2,000 bodies are awaiting full DNA identification.
In July, Suhra Sehomerovic will bury her two sons along with another 800 identified victims. "I've been waiting for this for 15 years, and now I don't know if I'll be able to survive it," she said.
The tribunal has indicted Mladic and his political chief Radovan Karadzic for genocide in Srebrenica. Karadzic is on trial in The Hague while Mladic is still on the run, believed to be hiding in Serbia.
(REUTERS)
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The Q´uran says people are not obligated to pray for transgressors, why does not Suhra Sehomerovic take comfort in that, face up to the fact that the Srebrenica men were armed and had burnt to death Serbs in their homes, murdered them by hacking them to death, and flayed them alive among others. So they did not manage to break through to Tuzla, so what does she want? If it is too much for her, perhaps she can go later, afterwards. She should think how the Serb women felt whose young sons were murdered.
Why does not this Suhra Sehomerovic take comfort in the Q' uran where it says that those who have transgressed are necessary to be prayed for, why does she not face the fact that her sons may have murdered Serbs by hacking off their heads, burnt Serbs alive in their homes, flayed them alive, this is all legally documented and witnessed online, they tried to break out armed, they ran into fire, if it is so difficult to go why does she not have them buried and go later, how does she think the Serb women felt whose young sons were literally murdered?
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