Witness recalls Bosnia killings

As he told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) about the attack on his village and the loss of his father in 1992, Elvedin Pasic, now 34, broke down in tears, while former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic watched without a flicker of emotion.

Pasic, who was 14 at the time of the attack, told the court about the last time he saw his father, one of 150 Muslim men killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the village of Grabovica. The mass killing in November 1992 was part of an early wave of ethnic cleansing carried out by nationalist Serbs wanting to establish a Serb state in Bosnia by removing all Muslims and Croats.

Seventy-year-old Mladic, who has been dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia," has been charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Among other things, he is facing charges relating to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed. The incident is the worst single atrocity committed on European soil since World War II.

Mladic's trial at the ICTY had been on hold since a day after the May 16 start date because of "irregularities" in the transfer of prosecution documents to the defense.

Along with former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, already on trial before the ICTY, Mladic is believed to have hatched a plan to rid Bosnia of Croats and Muslims.

The prosecution holds him responsible for the 44-month-long bombardment of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in which 10,000 people died.

Mladic spent 16 years on the run before being found and arrested in May 2011. He was flown to a prison in The Hague a few days later.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The Bosnian war led to the death of some 100,000 people and left another 2.2 million homeless.

ng, tj/jlw (AP, Reuters, AFP, dpa)