(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic has gone on trial on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, the (BBC) reported Wednesday.
He is the last of the main protagonists in the Balkan wars of the 1990s to face an international trial in The Hague.
Gen Mladic is accused of orchestrating the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim boys and men at Srebrenica in 1995.
He calls the accusations "monstrous" and the court has entered a "not guilty" plea on his behalf.
Now 70, Gen Mladic spent 15 years on the run before being apprehended by Serb forces last May and sent to The Hague.
He has been awaiting trial in the same prison as his former political leader Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested in 2008 and is now about half way through his trial on similar charges to Gen Mladic.
Gen Mladic is accused of committing genocide and other crimes against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Bosnian Croats in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing that began in 1992 and climaxed in Srebrenica in 1995.
Then, Serb fighters overran the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia - supposedly under the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers. Men and boys were separated off, shot dead and bulldozed into mass graves - later to be dug up and reburied in more remote spots.
Gen Mladic is also charged in connection with the 44-month siege of Sarajevo during which more than 10,000 people died.
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