GENERAL MLADIĆ IS NATIONAL HERO AND HEROIC FIGURE

BELGRADE, AUGUST 27 /SRNA/ — General Ratko Mladić was a national hero who suffered and died innocently at the hands of a political court, retired Army of Republika Srpska General Mićo Grubor told SRNA.

"General Mladić was an honorable and honest man. A military and human personality of such rare qualities will not appear in the history of the Serbian army for a long time," said Grubor, who was one of General Mladić's closest aides. He said he remembered him for his exceptional initiative, great independence and courage, and an extraordinary human attitude toward soldiers, the people, his country, and the interests of the Serb people. "People like that are rarely born. I have known him since Priština and Knin, and then we fought together for three years in BiH," General Grubor said. He added that General Mladić died innocent, pointing to what he described as the particularly inhumane treatment by the invented and political Hague tribunal. "That is not a court of justice; that court acted in an extremely inhumane manner," General Grubor said. He emphasized that General Mladić was strongly focused on defending the Serbian people from what he described as the third genocide of the last century. "He defended the Serb people, was exceptionally humane toward civilians, and fair toward those under his command. He fell victim to an organized crime and was literally killed by a political criminal court," General Grubor said. Former Commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, General Ratko Mladić, died in a detention hospital in The Hague at the age of 83, Lidija Pavićević, State Secretary at Serbia's Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, said in a statement to SRNA.