Boy in Chilling Srebrenica Pic 'Glad' Mladic Captured

Izudin Alic just wanted the general's chocolate
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 4, 2011 8:23 AM CDT
Izudin Alic, Boy in Famous Srebrenica Photo, Just Wanted Ratko Mladic's Chocolate
Izudin Alic, sitting at his home in Srebrenica, Bosnia, points to footage Tuesday, May 31, 2011, that shows him as a young boy being patted on the head by a grinning Ratko Mladic in 1995.   (AP Photo)

It's a chilling image: Ratko Mladic, the accused mastermind of the Srebrenica massacre, pats a tow-headed Muslim boy on the head and assures him all will be safe—a simple gift of chocolate just hours before the spilling of so much blood. The AP went looking for the boy in the video, and tracked down 24-year-old Izudin Alic, who lives nearby and remembers the encounter well. "He asked me what my name was and I said 'Izudin.' I was not afraid. I was just focused on the chocolate."

"I was 8 and I didn't know what was going on or who Ratko Mladic was," Alic says. As Alic took candy, his father was running from Mladic's troops for his life—which he lost, along with 8,000 other men and boys. "He was found years ago in one of the mass graves," says Alic, who escaped with his mother, sisters, and grandfather. Of Mladic's capture last month, Alic says he's "glad. He should get the biggest sentence possible. He killed my father, my uncle and so many of our people." Click for the entire story. (More Srebrenica stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X