Mladic Taunts Victims in Court

The Bosnian Serb general overcame his physical ailments to express his defiance of the UN war crimes court, its charges, and his victims.

Ratko Mladic made his first appearance in a UN war crimes court on charges of war crimes, where he denounced the allegations of genocide and massacres as “obnoxious” and taunted the families of his victims with a mocking salute. Mladic is facing 11 counts of war crimes for incidents between 1992 and 1995, when he led the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian civil war. The former general first said that due to strokes in recent years, he had not read the charges against him. After refusing to enter a plea, he turned to the gathered mothers of victims of the Srebrenica massacre, in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed, and saluted them twice while smiling. He's to appear in court again on July 4.