PARIS â€" One is a former warrior known as the Butcher of Bosnia who spent more than 15 years on the run in his native Serbia, where he was finally captured.
The other is a sometime poet and psychologist who evaded arrest in Serbia for more than a decade, disguised in the final years as a bearded New Age guru.
In an hourlong hearing on Tuesday that mixed tragedy and farce, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb former general, was reunited with his old political boss, Radovan Karadzic. It was the first time the men had been seen together in public since the aftermath of the Bosnian war, which ended in December 1995. Both stand accused of war crimes, including helping to engineer the July 1995 executions of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.
Mr. Karadzic, 68, who greeted Mr. Mladic during the hearing with “Good morning, general, sir,†had hoped to call Mr. Mladic as a witness on his behalf, ostensibly to prove that he had not given orders to commit war crimes. But, as my colleague Alan Cowell reports, Mr. Mladic, 71, was openly defiant and refused to testify. He denounced the war crimes tribunal in The Hague as a “Satanic court†and demanded that his dentures, which he had left in his cell, be brought to him so he could speak more clearly.
When Mr. Karadzic asked if there had ever been an agreement or understanding to expel Muslims and Croats from Serb-controlled areas, and if Mr. Mladic’s aim had been to “terrorize the citizens of Sarajevo by killing and sniping,†Mr. Mladic was evasive. (More than 10,000 people died in Sarajevo, now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during a brutal three-and-a-half-year siege of the city, in which Bosnian Serb snipers fired on civilians.)
Even during the war, colleagues who knew both men said, Mr. Mladic had been suspicious of Mr. Karadzic, preferring the company of his soldiers. “I reserve my right not to testify because I may injure my rights in my own case,†he told the court, which streamed the proceedings online. Mr. Karadzic, looking professorial in a suit and tie, stared back blankly.
Mr. Mladic’s lawyers appeared intent on portraying him as a doddering old man who could not distinguish between fiction and reality. But critics said the wily old general was playing a role. Either way, the frail figure in court was a striking contrast to the Mladic of the 1990s, whose bravery on the battlefield was legendary, even among his enemies. While others dove into trenches during an attack by Bosnian forces during the war, fellow soldiers say Mr. Mladic didn’t flinch and remained standing.
After the war, even as he was pursued, Mr. Mladic brazenly went out in public to visit the grave of his daughter, Ana, who had killed herself with one of his pistols in 1994. Friends say his daughter’s suicide drove him mad.
While clearly a diminished and ailing man, the Mr. Mladic who appeared in court did bear a resemblance to the general of the past in his seeming hunger for attention. As The Lede noted in 2011, in the run-up to the massacre at Srebrenica, Mr. Mladic was filmed smiling and handing out candies to Muslim children. Witnesses say the massacre unfolded not long after the cameras were turned off.
Mr. Karadzic, a former president of the Republika Srpska, a Serb breakaway state, was finally captured in Belgrade, Serbia, in 2008, 13 years after he was first accused of war crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was disguised as a ponytailed New Age guru called Dragan Dabic.
In addition to being accused of involvement in the Srebrenica massacre and of helping to orchestrate the siege of Sarajevo, Mr. Karadzic is accused of devising a systematic campaign to kill or drive out tens of thousands of non-Serbs from Serbian towns and villages. Even when he was one of the most wanted fugitives in the world, blamed for inciting a brutal ethnic war, Mr. Karadzic would hang out at the Crazy House bar in New Belgrade, disguised as Mr. Dabic, playing a traditional Serbian musical instrument and sitting under a photograph of himself.
As he left court, Mr. Mladic was quoted by the BBC as saying: “Thanks a lot, Radovan. I’m sorry, these idiots wouldn’t let me speak.â€
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