Argument

Portrait of The Hague as a Young Court

As Ratko Mladic goes on trial for war crimes at The Hague today, graphic artist Joe Sacco takes us back to the international tribunal's early days.

| May 16, 2012, 4:07 PM

During the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, at least 7,000 Muslim prisoners were killed, and although evidence that a crime had been committed was clear, it has taken 17 years for the international community to capture those allegedly responsible for the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. It’s been a long and tortured process — and when the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was created in 1993, its success seemed implausible at best.

On Wednesday, however, the trial of military commander Ratko Mladic — accused of crimes against humanity for planning the Srebrenica genocide — finally began at The Hague.

Here, Joe Sacco takes a look back at how these historic trials began, sketching some of the first proceedings at The Hague in 1998.

Joe Sacco