Mladic: Threats from a Bully

According to Harland, Mladic said, at a meeting with UNRPOFOR officers in the autumn of 1993, that he would “kill everybody but children” in the Muslim enclaves in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Srebrenica.

Harland, who was a civilian official with UNPROFOR and political advisor to the then Commander Rupert Smith in the period from 1993 to 1995, took notes at more than 20 meetings with Mladic and then wrote reports on those discussions for his superiors at the UN. Prosecutor Dermot Groome presented those reports as evidence against Mladic.

“Most of the time during the war 1,000 grenades exploded in Sarajevo every day. The shelling was mainly done with the aim of terrorising the local population, without military targets, very randomly,” Harland said.

The witness said that Mladic and Radovan Karadzic used the attacks on Sarajevo and withholding of supplies as a tool for putting pressure on the Government in Sarajevo so it would accept peace under their conditions.

“Mladic and Karadzic had the power to regulate the level of terror as if they were opening and closing a water-tap, depending on what suited them best at a certain moment. They would usually reduce the frequency of shelling when they faced threats of NATO air strikes,” Harland said.

Mladic, former Chief of the Main Headquarters of the Republika Srpska Army, is charged with terrorising the local population in Sarajevo by an artillery and sniping campaign, as well as committing genocide against more than 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995 and other municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Mladic would listen to his interlocutors, usually the UNPROFOR Commander, patiently and for a long time. After that he would very aggressively and not very logically presented a mixture of history, threats and comments about the situation. During most of the meetings he made threats to either the Bosnian authorities, the population or the UNPROFOR,” Harland said.

As he said, at a meeting held in November 1993 Mladic became “more dangerous, as he was frustrated by the fact that his achievements at the battlefield were not turned into a political solution and he blamed politicians for that”.

“He became increasingly belligerent. During the meeting he took a firm stand about the 22 captured Serb soldiers. He made threats that he would kill everybody except children in the Eastern Bosnia enclaves unless the soldiers were released soon. (…) Mladic was like a bully. If the opportunity arose to carry out these threats, probably he would do it,” Harland said.

He pointed out that “Mladic actually never had a war-winning strategy”.

“They would occupy territories and cities, killed or deported people, compressing Muslims on smaller and smaller parts of the territory, and then shelled them and deprived them of electricity, food and water. Then they would wait for the Sarajevo authorities to accept their conditions and wondered why it did not happen. They did not have an alternative plan for winning the war, despite having had the advantage in terms of armament,” the witness said.

At the next hearing, scheduled for tomorrow, Mladic’s Defence attorney Branko Lukic will cross-examine witness Harland.