They Would Never Hurt a Fly

The breaking up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s brought with it a cruelty and a brutality that few thought Europe would ever see again. Acclaimed novelist and journalist Slavenka Drakulic reports from the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, to try to learn from and understand these events.

As well as witnessing the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, she focuses on the lesser men, the ordinary individuals whose power did not extend beyond their village or their town borders. Men such as Goran Jelisicm a volunteer policeman, who executed many of his prisoners, or Drazen Erdemovic, a participant in the massacre of seven thousand Muslims in Srebrenica. It is their ordinariness that makes their crimes so shocking: the fact that the crimes were carried out not by regular soldiers, but by former waiters, rivers and fishermen.

But for all the horrors, there is hope here too: that justice offers future generations the chance to escape the shadow of the past.