The Butcher of Bosnia Our World

Mark Urban looks now

at the legacy of the man known

as the 'Butcher of Bosnia'.

A warning that some viewers may find

parts of this programme upsetting.

In the 1990s, terrible things

happened here. And even now,

Bosnia's earth guards its secrets.

GUNFIRE.

But in order to escape its past,

this country was confronted again

with the imminent verdict on general

Ratko Mladic, whose list of war

crimes led him to be dull but be

Butcher of Bosnia. -- dubbed the

Butcher of Bosnia.

In an old factory in central Bosnia,

the human cost of the war is still

being measured. For it is here that

unidentified corpses from mass

graves are being delivered even

today. And the families of 30,000

still missing search for answers.

This is, um... Overwhelming, in a

certain way. There are pictures of

the missing. There are human remains

pretty much everywhere here, by the

hundreds. And then, at the end

there, there are scraps of clothing

and other things that have been

recovered with them. And this place

is the main hope that a lot of the

families of those missing have for

discovering what on earth happened

to a loved one who just disappeared

all those years ago. Having covered

the war 25 years ago, I've come back

to explore the impact is that one

particularly malign man had on the

lives of thousands.

Ratko Mladic commanded Serb forces

in the Bosnian war. He is now facing

a verdict on an enormous catalogue

of war crimes, including genocide.

It has taken six years to try.

Four

days ago marked two decades and is

Ratko Mladic became the commander of

the main staff of the army of

Republika Serbska. On that day he

assumed the mantle of realising,

through military might, the criminal

goals of ethnically cleansing much

of Bosnia.

This woman was a judge

herself in the north-western town of

pre- adore when Serbian troops took

it over in May of 1992. She was

fired and became one of thousands of

Muslims sent to a nine or planned

that would come in from this is a

camp where, in a few months, 700

inmates died. -- sent to an iron ore

plant.

She was the product of what was

called ethnic cleansing, driving

non-Serbs out of much of Bosnia. 37

women were used to serve in the

camps dining hall. During the day

they could hear torture going on in

their nearby dormitories. Night

brought its own anguish.

I have to admit, somewhat ashamed to

admit it, but I was a little

sceptical of some of the reports

that initially emerged in 1992 about

what was happening to people in

these camps. But pretty quickly, it

did become clear that terrible

things were happening. And actually,

it was the human suffering caused in

that initial phase of the neck

cleansing and murder and rape that

went on in the north-west of Bosnia

here that caused the International

Criminal Court of also be formed and

set in train the whole process of

international justice that will

culminate in the sentencing of

general Ratko Mladic. -- ethnic

cleansing and murder. Our filming

was stopped by security guards.

What's the problem?

He is saying

that we are not allowed to film the

factory.

The iron plant is now in

action again under a foreign firm.

But it is a measure of the

sensitivities that Omarska still

generates.

Please rise.

Early on, the Hague

tribunal tried several of the

Omarska guards. One of those trials

featured Miroslav. A policeman at

the start of the war, he was

described in court as the deputy

commander of the camp. Then, as now,

he portrays himself as someone who

saved his Muslim wife's relatives

from the horror of the camp.

Because of the isolated acts of

kindness to some prisoners, do not

absolve any individual crimes which

may have been committed.

The court

said he was culpable of joint

enterprise. He knew what was going

on.

The chamber finds you guilty of

the crime against humanity,

persecution, and the war crimes

murder and torture.

In the war, we

used to travel into Surrey are

though via this mountain. --

Sarajevo. We are here again. This

place, reminiscent of the Winter

Olympics, became a battleground as

the focus of the war shifted from

the area around Prejidor to Bosnia's

capital. And in that long fight, a

whole new chapter of war crimes

began. Very quickly after the war

started, the Bosnian Serbs were

driven out of most of Surrey are

though. -- Sarajevo. They held a

couple of suburbs on that flank.

Other than that, they were in the

surrounding hills, pouring down

Sniper Fire and artillery fire on

the people below. Ratko Mladic began

a siege which was to last more than

three years. And of course, those

events now form a central part of

the indictments against him. From

the beginning of the conflict, Ratko

Mladic brought to bear the Serb

army's superiority in artillery. And

as this intercepted conversation

showed, used it against the

population of Sarajevo.

So, you would come out of the flats

that morning? Mia was a

seven-year-old living on the street.

How did the vibe change in the war?

It must have been a big, big change?

It was a shock.

The siege had just

started and she was brought out by a

rumour of ice cream.

We are heard

this extremely loud or whistle, and

suddenly, the earth began to shake.

I went flying up in there. -- in the

air. And another few seconds, all

hell broke loose.

SCREAMING.

I could see everybody

lying on the street, people in

pieces, a lot of light. -- Bullard.

-- blood.

In those dreadful moments

in which 20 people died, a cameraman

captured this fleeting image of Mia

being carried. She survived shrapnel

wounds. Her mother lost a leg in the

blast. Together, the family and

neighbours in view of the following

three years, during which at times,

1000 shells a day would fall on the

city.

We were submitted to shelling,

and Sniper rifles, no water, no

electricity, no food. So we were

like mice in a cage, pretty much.

While the world awaits the Ratko

Mladic verdict, it has gone on so

long some convicts have done their

time in prison and could choose

where to be released. A few years

ago, jubilant crowds turned out to

meet him as he returned. He was the

speaker of the Serb parliament. He

accepts people on his side were

guilty of war crimes as well.

For much of the war, the Bosnian -

Serb leadership successfully kept

the outside world that day,

sometimes intimidating UN troops, at

others, firing on or even taking

them hostage. But across in the east

of the country, events reached a

tipping point in the final year of

the war. The genocide indictment

against Ratko Mladic divides his

crimes into various phases. The

early part of the war around

north-west Bosnia and then the siege

of Sarajevo at the centre. And then

finally the enormous catalogue of

crimes that took place in this place

in 1995, Srebrenica. The UN declared

the enclave to be a safe area. But

as the capture was planned, the

Dutch troops had been abandoned by

their commanders. Ratko Mladic

savoured his triumph, and recalled

past defeats of the Serbs by the

Ottoman Turks.

Srebrenica was overrun, and more

than 20,000 frightened Muslim women

and children crammed into the Dutch

base. Rob was one of the soldiers

there.

Still, any time I walk in

this door, a split second, a split

second, I smell and see the people.

Dead people, Davies, everything

together. Thousands of people. --

babies. You cannot imagine it.

As

Srebrenica fell, one woman gave him

her woman to look after.

How

desperate do you have to be, a baby,

just born, you must be so proud of

it, to give him to someone because

at that moment it was the best

thinking for her to give the best

for her baby.

He passed the child on

to medics and it survived. Ratko

Mladic guaranteed the women and

children safe passage. But

meanwhile, his troops hunted the man

of Srebrenica. -- men. When

captured, they were taken to places

like this school. Soon after the

war, we visited it, checking reports

that men had been held here in shots

fired to keep them under control. --

here and shots.

Our information came from this man

who went back to the school with us

for only the second time. There, he

had seen Ratko Mladic personally

supervising what was to happen next.

The men, already terrified, were

packed into trucks and taken to a

nearby field where mass murder

began.

He is survived by playing dead among

the corpses. And then at night, he

escaped over the mountains to

government territory.

When we came here in 1996, the main

mosque had actually been blown up

and the minaret was lying in the

streets. It has been restored. And

over the years, a good many people

have come back. Muslim people, not

as many as were here before, but a

kind of Muslim Bosnia Clive has been

reconstructed in this town. He is

haunted by the loss of his father,

brother, and numerous cousins, and

also by the fact he still recognised

as Serbs around here from those

killing fields.

In the place he returned after the

war, there are also reminders

everywhere. Some men who were never

convicted, others who have served

their sentences, who she now

encounters on the streets. Taking

labouring jobs ends his return, he

is unable to leave the past behind

or get over what he regards as an

injustice.

It is pointless quibbling for him

with a sentence he has already

served. He is done with raging

against The Hague.

He believes that

politics as to leave its sectarian

bickering behind.

This remains a divided country in

which sectarian politicians play on

national fears. And for that reason,

as the trials and in The Hague, the

pursuit of war crimes will go on in

Bosnia itself.