ŠTRBAC: GENERAL MLADIĆ WAS BOTH OFFICER AND GENTLEMAN

BELGRADE, AUGUST 28 /SRNA/ – General Ratko Mladić was an officer and a gentleman, Savo Štrbac, director of the Veritas Documentation - Information Centre, told SRNA.

Štrbac said that Mladić also defended Serbs in Knin, Republika Srpska Krajina, at the beginning of the war in Croatia in the 1990s, adding that he shares the opinion of the majority of Serbs about the general.

"I knew him personally. We worked together. Even at the time when he was commander of the Knin Corps, I chaired or was a member of prisoner exchanges commissions. We went to negotiations together several times. So I can speak about him both as a man and as an officer and say that he was an officer and a gentleman," Štrbac stressed.

Štrbac said that he was a defense witness at Mladić's trial before the Hague Tribunal in November 2015 and that the general followed his testimony with great interest because he had also been accused of alleged crimes in Croatia, particularly in Dalmatia.

"Perhaps I managed, maybe partly thanks to me, to have that part of the indictment dismissed – what Croats criticize him for most today, namely that he was not convicted of anything in connection with the territory of Croatia," Štrbac said.

Štrbac said that he still keeps the letter Mladić wrote to him after his testimony.

"I heard that he gave each defense witness a photograph of himself and wrote a note of thanks on the back. He did that for me as well, but he also wrote me an eight-page letter," Štrbac recalled.

He stresses that, to his surprise, the letter contained a remarkably good recollection of certain places that his corps had once covered in Lika and Dalmatia, particularly the Benkovac area.

"Although people said he had suffered brain damage, he remembered people's surnames, where he had studied and whose house he had been in, when he had been there, where he had drunk good rakija, where he had eaten good prosciutto, where there were good people. Incredible. Of course, he praised those people as well," Štrbac recalled.

He revealed that in the letter Mladić used the word "satrapana" instead of "courtroom," and that, despite all the illnesses he suffered from, he was aware of where he was and what the verdict would be.

Štrbac stressed that General Mladić displayed firmness both as a man and as a soldier, adding that a soldier in wartime acts as a soldier and that his task is to defeat the enemy.

A soldier, especially a corps commander, Štrbac says, cannot be someone who cries over every situation, but rather someone who is always an example to others. He noted that General Mladić insisted that the army wear the same insignia.

"Perhaps things ended badly for us down there /in Croatia/ because we did not have someone with a firm hand in the army to maintain discipline. We were fortunate that he came down there and stayed for a while, and then unfortunate that he left," Štrbac said.

Speaking about the Hague Tribunal, Štrbac, himself a former judge, noted that courts are not humanitarian organisations and that people die in prisons all over the world, but said he was troubled by the fact that The Hague did not apply the same standards to all detainees.

"As someone from that profession, I know what prisons and verdicts are like. Everyone should have been treated in the same way, regardless of their ethnic, military or any other affiliation," Štrbac stressed.