— The video horrified the world: a grinning Ratko Mladic patting a young Muslim boy on the head and assuring him everyone in the Srebrenica area would be safe — just hours before overseeing the murder of 8,000 men and boys.
The boy in the video is now a 24-year-old man. He clearly recalls the sunny day in July 1995 when he met the Bosnian Serb military commander who gave him chocolate.
“I was 8 and I didn’t know what was going on or who Ratko Mladic was,” Izudin Alic told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
Mladic, 69, was captured last week by Serbian intelligence agents after 16 years on the run, and the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague plans to try him on charges of genocide. Mladic was flown Tuesday to the Netherlands after judges rejected his appeal to block an extradition order.
