This article is from the archive of our partner .
After Mladic's capture last week, a Belgrade court ruled that he was healthy enough to be extradited from Serbia to face trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague. His defense lawyer plans on appealing, the Telegraph reports, although Serbian authorities are expected to dismiss the appeal on Monday. As war reporter Janine di Giovanni recounts, "for those of us who helplessly witnessed the destruction of Sarajevo, it was imperative to find Mladic. He had to stand trial if there was ever to be even a semblance of justice."
But Giovanni and others also recall events that shaped Mladic into a "monster." By all accounts, he was a cruel man from the beginning of the war.
recounts her one brief meeting with him in 1993:Looking at me with a glacial stare, he seemed to regard me not as human but as some strange species. “Tell the reporter to move away from my car before I run her down,” he barked to one of his lackeys. I never saw him again.
And in an intercepted radio message in April 1993, the New York Review of Books wrote in a profile, Mladic could be heard ordering his commanders to pound with artillery force the trenches and woods where enemy soldiers were hiding. “Hit the raw meat,” he barked.