War crimes fugitive Mladic taken to court

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Sixteen years after the bull-necked military commander went on the run, a pale and shrunken Ratko Mladic was hauled into a courtroom Thursday to face charges of genocide in ordering torture, rape and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

A Serbian government that has changed mightily since Mladic's alleged atrocities trumpeted his arrest as a victory for a country worthy of EU membership and Western embrace. It banned all public gatherings and raised security levels to prevent ultra-nationalists from making good on pledges to pour into the streets in protest.

Mladic, one of the world's most wanted men, faces charges of genocide and war crimes at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where a judge said there was evidence of "unimaginable savagery."

"Thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers' eyes. . . . , " Judge Fouad Riad said during Mladic's 1995 indictment in absentia.

Mladic, 69, appeared frail and walked slowly yesterday evening as he went into a closed-door extradition hearing.

His lawyer said the judge cut questioning short because the suspect's "poor physical state" left him unable to communicate.

"He is aware that he is under arrest. He knows where he is, and he said he does not recognize The Hague tribunal," said attorney Milos Saljic. Mladic needs medical care and "should not be moved," he added.

Deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said Mladic is taking a lot of medicine but "responds very rationally to everything that is going on."

Extradition proceedings could take a week or more before Mladic's likely transfer to The Hague, where he faces life imprisonment. The UN court has no death penalty.

Bosnian immigrants interviewed in New York received the news of Mladic's arrest with a combination of elation at his capture, and anger that he had evaded it for so long.

Mahira Tanovic, a plastic surgeon whose private practice is in Lake Success, said she and many other Bosnian Muslims had scattered around the world to escape the atrocities of war criminals.

"I just hope that he is going to be put to trial to answer for all the criminal acts that he committed," said Tanovic, who lives in Queens.

Selma Mustovic, a native of Sarajevo who lives in Manhattan, said her reaction included a mix of optimism and anger.

"To think that all these years he has been relatively free and dancing and going to parties and weddings and playing with his grandchildren, while the survivors were still looking for the missing bodies of their loved ones, is just something that leaves me speechless," said Mustovic, 34. "I just feel a great sense of injustice in that."

According to census figures, close to 2,000 immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina live in New York City, as do more than 17,000 people from the former Yugoslavia.

With Víctor Manuel Ramos