Scene from a Bosnian death camp
As expected, Serbia's minister in charge of co-operation with the UN tribunal - Rasim Ljajic - claimed the footage was old. "Not a single shot is less than eight years old,?" he said. Ratko Mladic has never been seriously pursued by nationalist governments in Serbia and therefore, anything that the Serbian ultra-nationalist government says should be taken with a grain of salt.
The video was found and confiscated during search of the flat of Mladic?s wife Bosiljka on December 4 last year at the order of the Chamber for war crimes of the District court in Belgrade. During the search, Belgrade investigators also found Ratko Mladic diaries, some of which we republished on June 7th.
The footage shows Ratko Mladic receiving guests at his house in a Belgrade neighbourhood of Kosutnjak (location) where he introduces guests to BILJANA. "Biljana" is a wife of his son, Darko Mladic. She was Muslim, her previous name was AIDA, but she quietly changed her Muslim name into Serbian name BILJANA. She gave birth on March 2, 2006 to a boy, Mladic's grandchild. The child has been named after St. Stefan. They apparently have one more daughter, Anastazija, who was born in 2001. It is unclear which baby he was holding on his lap.
Some parts of this amateur video show Ratko Mladic attending a wedding party of one his bodyguards in a restaurant Kula near Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in September 2000. The restaurant is situated in the so called "East Sarajevo", rural part of Sarajevo held by Bosnian Serbs, which is close to the main military NATO headquarters located in the Federal part of Sarajevo. The restaurant is also near Ratko Mladic's village of birth - Boinovići. The village is located near the Jahorina mountain, southeast of Sarajevo.
Another part of this video shows Mladic as slowly walking on a snow-covered mountain path with a cane, looking significantly older than in other footage. According to some reports, he had a "stroke" in 2006 and he hardly recovered from it. Since then, he started walking with a cane. Therefore, it looks like this part of the footage is indeed from 2006 or even 2008 as claimed by FTV.
Then, the video also shows Ratko Mladic sitting in peaceful wooded surroundings of what the television said were Serbian Army military barracks. Serbian government said that "the last time Mladic was in military premises was at the Krcmari army barracks near [the eastern Serbian town of] Valjevo on June 1, 2002." However, the footage shows significantly older Ratko Mladic holding onto his cane while sitting with his wife in a compound surrounded by trees. He jokingly complains there is not enough coffee on the table.
The compound looks a like guarded military base. The entrance sign to the compound reads, "Barutana. Izgradjena 1807 god. Restaurirana 1976 god." (Gun Powder Factory. Built in 1807. Restored in 1976.), which is part of Belgrade Castle (Beogradska Tvrdjava) built by Ottomans.
The oldest portion of this video shows Ratko Mladic attending a funeral of his daughter, Ana, who committed a suicide in 1994. You may recall that in 1994, Mladic was actively murdering Bosniak civilians - women, children, men, and elderly - in Sarajevo and other cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He felt no emotion for mass murders of Bosniaks, but he sobs uncontrollably in front of his daughter's coffin. A perfect psychopath, indeed.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office at the ICTY said that they were examining the footage and would comment later. In the meantime, former Ratko Mladic bodyguard, Branislav Puhalo, told a Belgrade court Tuesday that Mladic was guarded by about 50 heavily armed men who were staying at an army barracks in Belgrade. He said the protection unit was set up in 1997 under orders from former President Slobodan Milosevic.
"It was all legal," Puhalo said at the trial of 10 people charged with helping Mladic evade justice. "We were tasked with protecting Mladic from criminals and bounty hunters." Puhalo said that Mladic's protection unit was disbanded in March 2002.
So we have 10 people standing trial for helping Ratko Mladic evade justice, but what about Radovan Karadzic's supporters? We wonder, why the same Belgrade Court failed to charge family members of Radovan Karadzic for helping him evade justice? Remember that Ratko Mladic's boss, Radovan Karadzic, freely traveled and regularly stayed in touch with his family, especially his wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic - all with the help of Dragan Karadzic, son of Radovan's brother Luka Karadzic. None of these people have ever been charged with obstruction of justice.
Comments (4)
robert-0
said:
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... Rasim Ljajic is a true hack in every sense. where did their govt pluck him from? He is the one always assuring us that "no informed sources" in serbia know where mladic is "hiding." they haven't a clue. yet he is always insisting that serbia is doing every possible thing to cooperate with the hague(!) and then he comes out immediately to assure us that none of this film footage is more recent than 8 years?? am i supposed to respect him because he is a from a minority in serbia, as persons at that other site suggested to me? stuff and nonsense. For years i traveled through RS, by bus, and at each stop, with the friendly local people serving basic provisions, you would inevitable see their wall calenders: heroic pictures of mladic and karadzic (no more slobo), and tear off months. that way you could see their images throughout the year. i mentioned that to one-time editor of Oslobodjenje, senka kurtovic, and she replied: "yes, just today we have an article about it -- karadzic and mladic are the modern serbian saints." i guess it meant that it was typical to use saints' images for such purposes, and now they had 2 new ones to promote. so yes, of course mladic and karadzic were (are) sociopaths, big time. i don't know who is worse: they're both monsters and i don't say so lightly. but what of the people that pay homage to them, that is always the question... and mladic's sensitive daughter -- could there be a sadder story than that? i hope he will suffer for it, every day of his life. roberto frisco |
Shame, Shame
said:
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... It must be such a shame to be a SERB in this century, alot has happened and all because of them. Thousands of innocent people have died because the Serbs greed and nationalistic devil. Why must they be allowed to join any organization, they are murderers and thief's. The only things to make amends for what they did is to admit their mistakes to the world only by doing so will it purify it self of past deeds, Recogniza Kosova and Arrest that Monster Mladic. |
argo
said:
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... WHY !?........Its very simple every serb is involved in all wars in ex YU don't forget in serbia they have state decision for those wars to happen 1989-90 when milosevic got inaugurated |
bluerose799
said:
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... The fact that the Serbian demands for new frontiers were purely unilateral and totally unjustified is shown by the Serbian attitude to non-Serbs in Serbia itself. Serbia raised the so-called issue of Serbs in Croatia, although Croatia, with 78% of Croats was, except for Slovenia, the republic with the most homogeneous population. It is a degree of homogeneity by no means exceptional by European standards. Serbia, on the other hand, with a proportion of about 65% Serbs, is less homogeneous than Croatia. The territorial integrity of Serbia, however, could not be called in question - in the Serbian view - because the principle of self-determination does not apply to Albanians, Hungarians and Bulgarians living in Serbia. The minorities question was stated to be a purely "internal" issue, although non-Serbian communities form huge majorities in areas bordering on Hungary, Albania and Bulgaria. If ethnic criteria were to be consistently applied, the annexation of these parts of Serbia to neighboring states would be technically fairly simple. Serbia excluded the possibility of secession by these non-Serbian populations by declaring that the external borders of Yugoslavia were inviolable. What was intended to apply to Serbs in Croatia was not accepted by Serbia in reference to Albanians, Hungarians and Bulgarians, or even to Moslems in the Sandjak or Croats in Vojvodina. Since the Serbian view was discriminatory and totally unacceptable to the other nations of Yugoslavia, and since Serbia could not impose it by political means, it set out to achieve its territorial ambitions by direct action. To this end it used the Yugoslav National Army and other federal institutions, where Serbs formed the majority. The prime target was Croatia and the aim was obviously the forcible imposition of revised frontiers or the seizure of large areas of Croatian territory (more than 50%). The afore- mentioned Mihajlo Markovic said in this connection in August 1990, when the Serbian aggression was in full swing: "The Yugoslav Army has to establish new frontiers... and paved the road toward so called The Great Serbia.” |
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