Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić dies in prison
Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić, who was called the “Butcher of Bosnia” because of his actions during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, has died in prison, BBC News reported. BBC special correspondent Allan Little, who covered the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, spoke about meeting Mladić at the beginning of the war in Bosnia.
A meeting near Sarajevo
According to Little, he met Mladić during the first hot summer of the war in Bosnia, at the Lukavica barracks on the southern outskirts of Sarajevo. The correspondent described the barracks as a place filled with weapons and paramilitary formations.
Little noted that Mladić had just returned from the front line in central Sarajevo and was excited by the proximity of the fighting. During their conversation, the commander held the journalist’s hand for several minutes, called himself a defender of brotherhood and unity in the former Yugoslavia, and said that he dreamed of a world without weapons and war. The correspondent recalls that Mladić seemed fanatical and dangerous to him at the time.
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Memories of war
Little also described a column of about 40,000 people who left their homes after a surprise offensive by Serbian forces. Among them was an 80-year-old man who lost his wife during the escape. When the journalist asked whether he was a Croat or a Muslim, the man replied that he was a musician.
According to Little, in the following years, forces under Mladić’s command committed mass killings, extermination, mass rape, forced expulsions, and burned villages. He noted that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, and that Mladić’s command created an atmosphere of impunity that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Two days after meeting the elderly musician, a Serbian gunner killed Little’s cameraman, Tihomir Tunuković. He was 25 years old, a young cinematographer from Zagreb who had worked with the correspondent for the previous 18 months.
