Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic faced the UN war crimes tribunal on Friday as a defiant general who never lost a battle, denying the charges against him as “obnoxious” and “monstrous”. Wearing a military forage cap, which he later removed, Mladic began the hearing with a brief salute. “The whole world knows who I am. I am General Ratko Mladic,” he said at the end of his first appearance. “I defended my people, my country … now I am defending myself,” he told the court and a rapt public gallery. “I just have to say that I want to live to see that I am a free man.” As expected, he declined to enter a plea and the court set his next hearing for July 4. Mladic told Judge Alphons Orie he was gravely ill and “in a poor state”. He said indignantly that he did not want to hear “a single letter or word of that indictment” read out to him. He shook his head in denial as Orie, reading a summary, described the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995 of which he is accused. “He showed no remorse, he mocked the court,” said Ramiza Gurdic whose two sons and husband were killed by Mladic forces. “It took him only three days to kill thousands of our loved ones and now he says he needs two months to read the indictment,” she said as she watched Mladic on television in Sarajevo. Once a burly and intimidating figure on the battlefield, Mladic appeared older than his 69 years. His mouth seemed to droop slightly at one corner and his words were slightly slurred, the possible result of a stroke. After making the basketball hand signal for a “timeout” to his lawyer Aleksandar Aleksic, Mladic obtained a 10-minute private session with microphones turned off, to discuss his health problems.
