Srebrenica

It is Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, most of them men and boys, were rounded up and systematically killed in the region of Srebrenica during Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's sweeping campaign to cleanse the Balkans of non-ethnic Serbs. At long last this week, the Serbian government issued an apology for the 1995 massacre in a hugely significant and politically difficult attempt to face that past. President Boris Tadic is to be commended for pressing his countrymen to address the polarizing issue of what he called "that monstrous crime."

'We give this town to the Serb nation.... The time has come to take revenge on the Turks. " Seventeen years later, the words still hang in the air like poison gas over Srebrenica. With that speech, Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic pronounced the death sentence on more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. On July 11, 1995, the slaughter began. Bosnian Serb soldiers loyal to Mladic hunted down, tortured and killed the male inhabitants of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the United Nations had blithely declared a "safe area" for Muslim civilians.

'We give this town to the Serb nation.... The time has come to take revenge on the Turks. " Seventeen years later, the words still hang in the air like poison gas over Srebrenica. With that speech, Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic pronounced the death sentence on more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. On July 11, 1995, the slaughter began. Bosnian Serb soldiers loyal to Mladic hunted down, tortured and killed the male inhabitants of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the United Nations had blithely declared a "safe area" for Muslim civilians.

LONDON — Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic confronted the accusations against him at the opening of his war crimes trial in The Hague on Wednesday with contemptuous gestures to the court and the victims who had come to see him face justice for atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Slowed by age and the hardships of 15 years on the run from the indictment by the United Nations tribunal, Mladic still mustered a hint of his trademark swagger as...

U.N. officials expressed outrage Tuesday over the carnage left in the town of Srebrenica after Serbian rebels rained artillery shells on trapped civilians in one of the most shocking attacks in Bosnia-Herzegovina's year-old war. Amid Srebrenica's privation and disease, the death toll from the bombardment rose to nearly 60. However, Tuesday was relatively peaceful in the town and U.N.

Gen. John Sheehan, the former NATO commander, told a Senate committee this month that part of the blame for one of the last half-century's most famous atrocities -- the massacre at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war -- rested on gays in the Dutch military. Homosexuals in the Dutch military had depleted the forces' morale, he argued to the senators, and made them "ill-equipped to go to war." And that was in part why they failed to prevent Bosnian Serbs from massacring more than 8,000 civilians in the former haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.

"Scandalous," declared one. "Way off the mark," fumed another. Top Dutch leaders ditched their usual diplomacy Friday to angrily denounce a retired U.S. general's suggestion that allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in their military was partially to blame for Europe's worst massacre since World War II. The statement was made Thursday by John Sheehan, a retired Marine general, before a Senate hearing on the U.S. military's "don't ask,...

Thousands of supporters of war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic rallied Sunday to protest the arrest of the man whom they revere as a national hero but whom much of the West considers a mass murderer. Ultranationalists, government foes and rowdy soccer fans gathered in front of the parliament building in downtown Belgrade to wave Serbian flags and denounce Mladic's capture and expected extradition this week to The Hague to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. As darkness fell, a few clashes broke out as demonstrators threw rocks at riot police, who were deployed in large numbers throughout the city center and around Western embassies.

LONDON — Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic confronted the accusations against him at the opening of his war crimes trial in The Hague on Wednesday with contemptuous gestures to the court and the victims who had come to see him face justice for atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Slowed by age and the hardships of 15 years on the run from the indictment by the United Nations tribunal, Mladic still mustered a hint of his trademark swagger as...

Serbian artillery rained more shells on the battered Muslim town of Srebrenica on Sunday, and the U.N. peacekeeping commander holed up there reported that the situation is desperate. Gen. Philippe Morillon has set up headquarters in the town, which has been under Serbian siege for 11 months, according to Laurens Jolles, a Dutch official of the United Nations' refugee agency.

Thousands of supporters of war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic rallied Sunday to protest the arrest of the man whom they revere as a national hero but whom much of the West considers a mass murderer. Ultranationalists, government foes and rowdy soccer fans gathered in front of the parliament building in downtown Belgrade to wave Serbian flags and denounce Mladic's capture and expected extradition this week to The Hague to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. As darkness fell, a few clashes broke out as demonstrators threw rocks at riot police, who were deployed in large numbers throughout the city center and around Western embassies.

Under an indictment last amended in November 2009, the U.N. war crimes tribunal has filed these charges against former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic: • One count each of genocide in the town of Srebrenica and elsewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina; complicity in genocide; persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; extermination; deportation; unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians; cruel treatment; attacks on civilians;...

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of overseeing the worst massacre in Europe since the end of World War II, has been arrested, Serbian authorities said Thursday. Mladic is Europe's most wanted war crimes suspect for his alleged role in the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the enclave of Srebrenica, an atrocity that came to symbolize the brutality of the Balkans conflict. The war crimes tribunal in The Hague wants to try Mladic on charges of genocide.

It is Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, most of them men and boys, were rounded up and systematically killed in the region of Srebrenica during Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's sweeping campaign to cleanse the Balkans of non-ethnic Serbs. At long last this week, the Serbian government issued an apology for the 1995 massacre in a hugely significant and politically difficult attempt to face that past. President Boris Tadic is to be commended for pressing his countrymen to address the polarizing issue of what he called "that monstrous crime."

Gen. John Sheehan, the former NATO commander, told a Senate committee this month that part of the blame for one of the last half-century's most famous atrocities -- the massacre at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war -- rested on gays in the Dutch military. Homosexuals in the Dutch military had depleted the forces' morale, he argued to the senators, and made them "ill-equipped to go to war." And that was in part why they failed to prevent Bosnian Serbs from massacring more than 8,000 civilians in the former haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.

"Scandalous," declared one. "Way off the mark," fumed another. Top Dutch leaders ditched their usual diplomacy Friday to angrily denounce a retired U.S. general's suggestion that allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in their military was partially to blame for Europe's worst massacre since World War II. The statement was made Thursday by John Sheehan, a retired Marine general, before a Senate hearing on the U.S. military's "don't ask,...

Under an indictment last amended in November 2009, the U.N. war crimes tribunal has filed these charges against former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic: • One count each of genocide in the town of Srebrenica and elsewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina; complicity in genocide; persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; extermination; deportation; unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians; cruel treatment; attacks on civilians;...

In Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues," there's an account of a Bosnian rape survivor's story, squirmingly graphic by design. In theatrical terms, it is the polar opposite of the cool, murmuring approach favored by the French playwright and director Olivier Py in the 90-minute elegy "Requiem for Srebrenica." Py's work--elegant, glacial, frustrating--made its West Coast premiere over the weekend at Cal State L.A.'s Luckman Fine Arts Complex, following engagements in Boston and Northampton, Mass.

Re "Long-sought war crimes suspect caught in Serbia," July 22 Though many will cheer the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, his alleged crimes represent only one portion of the horrible saga of Bosnia's civil war. The Hague tribunal has not seriously investigated the crimes committed against Serbian civilians as it strives to blame the Serbian people for all that has happened during and after the Western-catalyzed breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Most recently, Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric was released after serving a brief sentence, despite the severity of his crimes.

The legacy of Radovan Karadzic is etched here in unsmiling, mistrustful faces; on tombstones that march shoulder to shoulder for nearly a quarter-mile; in empty, scarred houses whose owners never returned. Karadzic's Bosnian Serb army rounded up thousands of Muslims living or sheltering in Srebrenica on a sweltering July day 13 years ago and separated males from the women.