{"id":133450,"date":"2017-11-23T01:33:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T06:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=133450"},"modified":"2017-11-23T01:33:23","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T06:33:23","slug":"canadian-general-who-led-un-force-in-sarajevo-commends-conviction-of-mladic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/11\/23\/canadian-general-who-led-un-force-in-sarajevo-commends-conviction-of-mladic\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian general who led UN force in Sarajevo commends conviction of Mladic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lewis<\/a>
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 \u201cButcher of Bosnia\u201d when he was captured in Serbia in May 2011. (Photo By Jadran Pandurevi\u0107 – Own work, CC BY 3.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cButcher of Bosnia\u201d when he was captured in Serbia in May 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m just amazed that it has taken six years,\u201d MacKenzie said. \u201cIt’s not a great endorsement of the international criminal court for the former Yugoslavia, but at least they came to the right conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

His sentence Wednesday was part of a 23-year effort by a UN tribunal to seek justice for atrocities committed during the Bulkan wars in the early 1990s. The legal battles will continue, however, with Mladic’s lawyers vowing to appeal his convictions on charges that included war crimes and crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Srebrenica, for example, you can debate the issue left, right and centre about whether is was genocide or not, but it was a massacre and it was either encouraged or condoned by the general in charge and that makes him immediately guilty of a war crime,\u201d MacKenzie said, adding that is was unnecessary for the court drag the proceedings over six years.<\/p>\n

Canadian military personnel were deployed to the Balkans as peacekeepers in 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia. MacKenzie said there was never an intention for the UN be involved in Bosnia, but they were dragged into the conflict because its headquarters for the Croatian mission was in Sarajevo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really the last place they should have put it, because we would be seen as having a UN presence in Sarajevo, but it was a headquarters with a bunch of staff officers and 30 soldiers \u2014 Swedish conscript soldiers \u2014 and we weren’t in a position to protect anything if trouble started,\u201d MacKenzie said. \u201cWell, two and a half weeks after we arrived, war started.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacKenzie said Mladic \u201cgot everything he deserved.\u201d He also described him as a \u201cbully,\u201d who said several times that he would return MacKenzie and his soldiers to\u00a0Canada\u00a0in body bags if NATO threats persisted against Bosian Serbs.<\/p>\n

Melita Kuburas, a journalist at Metro News in Toronto who came to\u00a0Canada\u00a0from Biljani, Bosnia, when she was nine years old, applauded the court for convicting Mladic for the genocide in Srebrenica, but said she was disappointed that he was acquitted of genocide in other towns.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor my home town, which is a small village that lost approximately 300 people \u2014 most of them were found in mass graves \u2014 this is something that they still live with,\u201d Kuburas said. \u201cI guess it kind of feels like they don’t have justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kuburas said her father was imprisoned in a concentration camp for six months before coming to\u00a0Canada\u00a0and her grandfather was one of the hundreds of men found buried in mass gravesites in Bosnia.<\/p>\n

Medina Torlak, who is on the board of directors for the Institute for Research of Genocide\u00a0Canada, said many people in her community are disappointed that the court was not convinced of genocidal intent in other parts of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn’t just Srebrenica, this happened all across Bosnia,\u201d Torlak said. \u201cA lot people were in concentration camps as well and it’s not being recognized by the courts and that’s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 A retired Canadian major-general who led a United Nations force in Sarajevo commended the sentencing of former Bosnian …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":133453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[6341,34691,34404,34688,34690,34689],"class_list":["post-133450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-conviction","tag-lewis-mackenzie","tag-ratko-mladic","tag-retired-canadian-major-general","tag-sarajevo","tag-united-nations-force","mauthors-daniela-germano","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}