Experts on transitional justice and human rights activists predict that a fight is ahead. Only those armed with facts can stop the celebration of war criminals, unfortunately, left to the young generation as a cultural heritage. Ratko Mladić is a war criminal. He is the former commander of the General Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), a general by military rank, who was in hiding for almost 16 years and was finally arrested in Serbia in 2011. On June 8th of this year, after nine years of court proceedings, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) upheld a verdict sentencing Mladić to life in prison for genocide in Srebrenica, terrorizing citizens in Sarajevo, and other crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. However, disrespect for court-established facts can be seen in recent events in Serbia concerning a mural of Ratko Mladić. Despite calls to remove the mural, Serbian police banned its removal on November 9th this year, citing “security risks.” The situation is not better in Bosnia and Herzegovina, either, and only time can tell whether legal provisions banning genocide denial and other crimes will be implemented. Experts on transitional justice and human rights activists predict that a fight is ahead. Only those armed with facts can stop the celebration of war criminals, unfortunately, left to the young generation as a cultural heritage. From the Indictment to the Final Verdict The trial of Mladić began in May 2012 before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). After more than five years, on November 22nd, 2017, Mladić was convicted for “the worst massacre in Europe since the Nazi era,” according to the British magazine The Guardian. He was convicted of genocide and persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, and forcible transfer from the Srebrenica area in 1995; persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, and inhumane acts of forced relocation in municipalities throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina; for killing, terrorizing, and unlawfully attacking civilians in Sarajevo; and taking United Nations (UN) hostages, as stated in the ICTY’s Trial Judgment Summary. He committed the crimes by participating in and contributing to four joint criminal enterprises (JCEs), namely the comprehensive joint criminal enterprise, the joint criminal enterprise related to Sarajevo, the joint criminal enterprise related to Srebrenica, and the joint criminal enterprise related to hostage-taking. He is guilty of orchestrating the murder of more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys throughout Srebrenica, including the killing of more than 1,000 men in a large warehouse in the village of Kravica and 1,000 men near a school in Orahovac. Under Mladić’s command, Sarajevo was under siege for 1,460 days – the longest siege in modern history, when hundreds of thousands of grenades were fired on the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina and more than 11,500 people were killed. This garnered him the nickname the “butcher of Bosnia.” Mladić is guilty of ten of the 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war. His indictment was filed in 1995. However, Mladić hid from international justice for the next 16 years. He was arrested in Lazarevo, Serbia, in May 2011. His trial began on May 16th, 2021. Three hundred seventy-seven witnesses were examined, and about 9,914 pieces of evidence were admitted. He was tried on the indictment last revised on December 16th, 2011. The Genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica The Trial Chamber, chaired by Judge Alphonse Orie, found that members of the Republika Srpska Army (VRS) intended to eradicate all Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica, who represented a significant part of the protected group. The verdict found that between July 12 and 14, 1995, members of the VRS and the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) organized transportation for approximately 25,000 Bosnian Muslims, mostly women, children, and the elderly, from the Srebrenica enclave to the territory under the control of the BiH Army, in convoys of buses and trucks. Bosnian Serb soldiers systematically separated men from the rest. Among the separated men, there were boys as young as 12 and people over 60. The separation was aggressive. People on the buses were told that Bosnian Muslim men would come later. They never did. The Bosnian Muslim men taken from Potočari were detained in temporary facilities and later taken by bus, along with others captured from a column of fleeing people to execution sites in Srebrenica, Bratunac, and Zvornik. The Trial Chamber found that many of these men and boys were cursed, insulted, threatened, and forced to sing Serbian songs while waiting to be executed.