After the Mladić verdict, I want to thank the man who saved me

In July 1995, I faced certain death at the hands of Ratko Mladić’s so-called Army of Republika Srpska. A man named Kenneth Biser saved me.

By the time he was arrested in the village of Lazarevo in Serbia in May 2011, former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić was a shadow of the man I met in Srebrenica in July 1995. He was arrested after 16 years in hiding, successfully evading the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). There’s little doubt that the Serbian police and intelligence agencies – which executed his arrest following years of international pressure on Serbia to hand over Mladić and other war crimes suspects – had also been helping him remain free all that time. When he finally showed up at court in The Hague, a ruin of a man, he was adamant that he – who oversaw the Srebrenica genocide operation and commanded a hundreds-of-thousands-strong military in a conflict that resulted in over a million refugees, 100,000 dead, and countless suffering – did no wrong. After a trial spanning five years, with 530 working days, 9,914 exhibits, and 592 witnesses, the court disagreed. It found him guilty in November 2017 of one count of genocide, six counts of crimes against humanity, and four counts of violations of laws or customs of war. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Mladić appealed the decision. On Tuesday, the International Residual Mechanism for International Tribunals (IRMCT), a legal entity that has inherited international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, upheld Mladić’s convictions and confirmed his life sentence. Its judgement was final and cannot be appealed any further.