'Mladic’s death does not erase memory of Srebrenica'

BELGRADE

Witnesses and representatives of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide said Ratko Mladic’s death would not erase the crimes for which he was convicted, noting that he died under a life sentence.

Mladic, 84, died on Aug. 27 while hospitalized in The Hague, according to the U.N.’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. He had been in U.N. custody since 2011.

“Ratko Mladic is dead, but that changes little,” Srebrenica Memorial Center director Emir Suljagic wrote on X. “It does not bring back the dead. It does not erase mass graves.”

Suljagic said Mladic’s death would not turn him into a “historical figure” and called for truth, responsibility and remembrance to be preserved.

“He died convicted of genocide and other grave crimes,” Suljagic said.

“The people he sent to their deaths were not given the chance to grow old.”

Kada Hotic, vice president of the Mothers of Srebrenica and Zepa association, said it was important that requests to release Mladic on health grounds had been rejected.

“His sentence was life imprisonment,” she said.

“The fact that he remained in custody until his death will go down in history.”

Hotic said families were still searching mass graves for the remains of their relatives because of Mladic’s orders.

Murat Tahirovic, head of the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide, described Mladic’s continued detention until his death as “a victory for justice.”

Mladic, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb army, was convicted in 2017 of genocide in Srebrenica, crimes against humanity and war crimes. His convictions and life sentence were upheld on appeal in June 2021.

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces captured the U.N.-declared safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Mladic was arrested in Serbia in May 2011 after spending nearly 16 years on the run and was transferred to The Hague.