Building the Srebrenica case against Mladic

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]




BELGRADE: Police officer Jean-Rene Ruez spent six years picking through remote mass grave sites strewn with mines around Srebrenica to help build the case against Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic.

The evidence Ruez collected while investigating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre -- Europe's worst single atrocity since World War II -- will be key in the genocide case a UN war crimes court will bring against Mladic following his arrest in Serbia on Thursday.

For Ruez, a French policeman on loan to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) between 1995 and 2001, the Srebrenica investigation was "a slow descent into horror".

"We had the sensation that history was repeating itself, that we were seeing things that we thought we would never see again in Europe" after the horrors of the Holocaust, he said in an interview after Mladic's arrest.

In just several days after the fall of Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb troops led by Mladic killed almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys from the eastern UN-protected enclave. The victims were buried in a few mass graves.

To hide the size of the massacre, the army came back months later, dug up at night and re-buried the bodies in 28 so-called secondary grave sites.

Ruez and his team extensively interviewed the handful of men who survived the mass executions. Their testimony, aerial photography, informants and careful examination of seized Bosnian Serb military documents led them to hidden grave sites deep in the hills and mountains that surround Srebrenica, often mined to further hamper their discovery.

"Every time we set foot on the terrain we were not sure if we would return with both our legs," said the 50-year-old police officer, currently working as a police attache to a French embassy in Europe.

His team was working with a maximum of six investigators, plus forensic teams to excavate the mass graves.

"It was like moving a mountain with a teaspoon," he recalled.

In comparison, 300 investigators worked on the case against Belgian serial killer and child molester Marc Dutroux who killed four girls and a former associate.

In the beginning Ruez's team had trouble finding bodies, which fuelled theories that the scale of the massacre was exaggerated.

"As we started excavating the first grave sites we found only 500 bodies. To support the charges we needed bodies," Ruez said.

Finally over the course of many years the secondary grave sites were identified and excavated. There are still new sites being investigated almost 16 years after the massacre.

So far the remains of 6,500 Srebrenica massacre victims have been identified through DNA analysis.

Ruez said his small team was always meticulous and objective.

"In a case of this importance it is vital that things are done seriously. I have always led the investigation for the prosecution and the defence case. If an investigation is found to be biased it undermines the whole case," he said.

Thanks to the evidence collected by Ruez and his team, two of Mladic's key allies in Srebrenica, Ljubisha Beara and Vujadin Popovic, were convicted to life in prison.

His second-in-command during the assault, general Radislav Krstic, was sentenced to 35 years in jail for aiding and abetting genocide.

Even though Ruez characterized Mladic as a "key piece" in the massacre, he stressed that the general was innocent until proven guilty and it was important "not predict the judges' decision".

"If you know that his right-hand men received life sentences we can imagine that his future is rather bleak," Ruez said.

He expects to be called again to testify if Mladic is sent to The Hague as he has done in every case involving Srebrenica before the ICTY.

After years of probing the massacre, Ruez said he still cannot comprehend the killings.

"It was a slaughter for the sake of slaughtering," he said. (AFP)