Canadian general who led UN force in Sarajevo commends conviction of Mladic
TORONTO — A retired Canadian major-general who led a United Nations force in Sarajevo commended the sentencing of former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic to life behind bars, but criticized the international court for taking too long to convict him of war crimes.
Lewis MacKenzie, who met Mladic several times when he commanded a peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said he believes there was plenty of evidence to convict the man known as the “Butcher of Bosnia” when he was captured in Serbia in May 2011.
“I’m just amazed that it has taken six years,” MacKenzie said. “It’s not a great endorsement of the international criminal court for the former Yugoslavia, but at least they came to the right conclusion.”
The conflict in the former Yugoslavia erupted after the country’s breakup in the early 1990s, with the worst crimes taking place in Bosnia. Mladic’s forces also carried out the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War in Srebrenica, where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys of fighting age were killed.