Sweets from Mladic hours before mass murder at Srebrenica

IT WAS television footage that captured one of the most sinister moments in the Bosnia war.

General Ratko Mladic was shown patting a Muslim lad on the head, and assuring him that everyone in Srebrenica would be safe, just hours before he oversaw the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

The blond-haired boy in the video is now a 24-year-old man who clearly recalls the sunny day in 1995 when he met the Bosnian Serb military commander.

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Yesterday Izudin Alic, a thin youth with sunken eyes, said: "I was eight and I didn't know what was going on, or who Ratko Mladic was."

Mladic, now 69, was captured last week by Serbian intelligence agents after 16 years on the run, and the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague plans to try him on charges of genocide. Mladic was sent to the Netherlands yesterday, hours after judges rejected his attempt to overthrow an extradition order on appeal.

In 1995, Mr Alic was among thousands of Bosnian Muslims who fled to the Srebrenica area seeking protection from United Nations troops. That July evening, he joined other children flocking to a field where they had heard an important soldier was handing out treats.

"I went there with other children and took that chocolate bar from Ratko Mladic," said Mr Alic. "He asked me what my name was and I said Izudin. I was not afraid. I was just focused on the chocolate."

His grandfather had forbidden him to go, but he crept out of the factory where the family was hiding unable to resist the lure of chocolate.

He was devouring it with gratitude while his father was being hunted down by Mladic's men in nearby woods. His father, Sahzet, had fled the night before along with 15,000 other Srebrenica men, moving through mountains and minefields. Mladic's troops soon caught up with them.

"He was found years ago in one of the mass graves," Mr Alic said, leafing through a photo album showing the family in a garden in front of their home.

The footage that captures Mladic patting Alic on the head generated worldwide revulsion because of the contrast between his feigned benevolence and the reality of the massacre to come.

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In the video, Mladic asks the boy his age, to which he responds "12." He says he lied to appear more grown-up and didn't know the risks. The youngest known Srebrenica victim was 14.

The UN had declared the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, besieged by Serbs throughout the conflict, a protected area for civilians. When Mladic's troops overran the enclave, some 20,000 people flocked to the UN base outside Srebrenica for protection.So did the Alic family - Izudin, his two sisters, mother and grandfather.

When Serb troops reached the base, the outgunned and outnumbered Dutch peacekeepers never fired a shot, and Mladic's troops began separating out the men for execution.

The family returned to settle in Prohici, just outside Srebrenica, a few years after the war. Mr Alic earns a living as a construction worker and making sandwiches at a fast-food stall.

He often prays at his father's grave in the town's memorial centre, where thousands of Mladic's victims were finally laid to rest. For Mr Alic and his family, some solace came when Mladic was captured last week in a village north of Belgrade.

"I was glad," Alic said. "He should get the biggest sentence possible.

"He killed my father, my uncle and so many of our people."