"I recognize only my own people's trial": Mladic in long-suppressed interview
Ratko Mladic, now at
The Hague facing charges of genocide, has largely been silent since his recent arrest.
Back in
1995, however, he gave a candid interview explaining his side of the
Srebrenica story, which RT can now reveal.
After more than 10 years in hiding, today
Mladic looks more like an ill old man than the person who was allegedly responsible for the largest mass murder in
Europe since
WWII.
In 1995, just one month after the
Srebrenica massacre and three weeks after
The Hague Tribunal pressed charges against Mladic, a
Western TV crew managed to meet with the general for an interview. But despite the obviously high level of importance and the exclusivity, the interview was never aired.
The tapes remained in
Bosnia and Herzegovina in private archives and only now is the conversation being released to the public after RT managed to gain access to the materials.
According to the
Tribunal, the Srebrenica massacre refers to the killing of more than 8,
000 Bosnian Muslims, mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995.
The killing was allegedly conducted by units of the
Army of Republika Srpska under the command of
General Mladic. In
April 1993, the
United Nations declared Srebrenica was a "safe area" under its protection. However the 400-strong contingent of
Dutch peacekeepers failed to prevent the alleged massacre from happening
.
In the interview, Ratko Mladic gave a different picture of those events: "I can tell you that in April-May
1993 an agreement on Srebrenica was signed. It clearly defined it as a safe demilitarized area where no armed military could be present except for the UN soldiers. But instead of disarming the Muslim formations, as they had committed themselves to doing under the agreement on Srebrenica singed by me and General
Morillon, the United Nations forces turned those safe areas into terrorist and fundamentalist bases from where our villages and towns were attacked. Muslims from Srebrenica and
Zepa burnt down more than
200 Serbian villages around those two places and killed en masse and massacred all the
Serb civilian population in many other villages."
The General also described in detail how sometimes the Bosnian Muslims were armed with the help of
Iran under the supervision of the
UN peacekeeping contingent.
"
Sometimes, they even used helicopters to airlift weapons from Iran and other combat hardware. We knocked down one such helicopter on the outskirts of Zepa two or three months ago," he said.
Mladic claimed that, despite knowing about the shipments of arms to the Bosnian Muslims and their alleged attacks on the civil Serb population, he held his forces back: "The Muslims attacked the enclave of
Sarajevo, also a safe area, though it was not defined as such by any kind of agreements of the two parties. They massacred everybody whom they captured alive and killed several of our soldiers in the villages of
Visnjica and
Banja Lucica. The Muslim attack was carried out exactly from the exclusion zone on
Mounts Igman and Bjelasnica, from which
Republika Srpska had pulled out its forces in 1993, and which had been in confidence handed over to peacekeeping forces."
According to the general, by that time the bubble of patience had been forced to grow for two years and at one
point it finally burst
...
"
Unfortunately, the bad image of the
Serbs and the
Serbian people in general created by some media outlets has led to unequal and biased approach to the sides in conflict by part of the world community who took the side of the
Croats and Muslims, who actually started this bloody war in the territory of the former
Yugoslavia," Mladic said.
Currently, prosecutors at The Hague Tribunal are thinking about dividing the process against Ratko Mladic into two parts -- Srebrenica in one separate trial and other war crimes the former general is accused of in another. However it is unclear exactly what the condition Mladic's health is. Any information on that is made public only with his prior consent. According to his relatives, he is suffering from the effects of a stroke and had several heart attacks.
Recently Mladic had hernia surgery and even refers to himself as "a very sick person".
The Tribunal's chief prosecutor,
Serge Brammertz, openly stated that the defendant's health could deteriorate, which may affect the Tribunal's ability to complete the trial.
The full transcript of the interview with Ratko Mladic:
http://rt.com/news/ratko-mladic-interview-full-185/
Originally aired on RT, August 25,
2011
http://rt.com/news/mladic-interview-srebrenica-massacre-155/
See also RT video:
Hague Tribunal Wakes Up to Mladic
Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loBoRIy-jL4&feature;=channel_video_title