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| This Mladic victim was blinded |
| This Mladic victim was blinded in school at 14
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 2-June-2011
10:43:48 AM |
| Sead Bekric was just 14 when he was hit and blinded by artillery fire on a schoolyard nearly 20 years ago during the Bosnian war. The graphic photo of his bloody, maimed face helped introduce the world to the atrocities that have been blamed on former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.
Bekric, now 32 and living in Florida, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he was shocked but satisfied to hear of Mladic's recent arrest on charges of orchestrating the bloodshed that wounded him and killed thousands of his countrymen.
"Years have passed by. We have lost our loved ones and they will never return to us," said Bekric, whose father was killed during the war and whose sister was gang-raped.
"When you go through the horror that we went through and losing our loved ones through horrible crimes, you'll never have closure."
Mladic, who was arrested after 16 years as a fugitive, will appear before a judge Friday. He faces charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in a war that left about 100,000 people dead and forced 1.8 million to flee their homes.
In 1993, Bekric was kicking a soccer ball with friends when he heard an explosion nearby. After he ran toward a friend who had been injured, he said, his left eye was "blown out of my head." His right eye was crushed like a grape and his nose was shattered.
In the days after the attack, he languished in a filthy hospital in Bosnia with other wounded children. Doctors pulled shrapnel from his face - with no antibiotics or anesthesia.
A photo of Bekric made the cover of Newsweek in May 1993. He was also on TV newscasts around the world.
An American woman, Claire Halasz, was so moved by Bekric she worked with a group called AmeriCares to bring him to her home in California. There, he received more than a dozen surgeries. Doctors were able to reconstruct his face, but not his sight.
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