Serb leader Ratko Mladic in throat-slit gesture to survivor

RATKO Mladic was a shadow of the swaggering general who once “held Sarajevo in the palm of his hand” during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war as his long-awaited genocide trial opened yesterday – but he still managed to inflame Bosnia’s festering war wounds with the flick of his hand.

• Mladic faces 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

• The 70-year-old refused to enter pleas, but he denies wrongdoing, saying he acted to defend Serbs in Bosnia

• If convicted he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment

His appearance at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal is the culmination of a long wait for justice for survivors of the 1992-95 war that left 100,000 people dead.

Mladic gave a thumbs-up and clapped to supporters in the public gallery of the court at The Hague, Holland, as the trial started 20 years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War.

Munira Subasic, who lost 22 family members in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, was among a group of relatives of war dead heading into the courtroom to face Mladic.

She 65-year-old said she wanted to look him in the eye “and ask him if he will repent for what he did”.

The trial is a landmark for the UN court and international justice - Mladic is the last suspect from the Bosnian War to go on trial there.

Dressed in a suit and tie, Mladic occasionally wrote notes and showed no emotion as prosecutors began outlining his alleged crimes.

Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said at the outset that the court was considering postponing the presentation of evidence, due to start May 29, due to “errors” by prosecutors in disclosing evidence to the defence.

Prosecutor Dermot Groome said he would not oppose a “reasonable adjournment”.

Mr Groome opened his statement by focusing on the case of a 14-year-old boy whose father and uncle were among 150 men murdered by Bosnian Serb forces in November 1992.

He said Mladic’s forces continued such killings through to 1995, when they massacred 8,000 Muslim men in the Srebrenica enclave.