Ratko Mladic War Crimes Trial Starts

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Ratko Mladic was a shadow of the swaggering general who once "held Sarajevo in the palm of his hand" during Bosnia's 1992-95 war as his long-awaited genocide trial opened Wednesday. Yet he still managed to inflame Bosnia's festering war wounds with the flick of his hand.

Hobbled by strokes and wearing a business suit instead of combat fatigues, the frail 70-year-old gestured toward the families of massacre victims in an angry exchange of hand signals through the bulletproof glass that separated them.

"Not even an animal would behave like that," said Mevlija Malic as she watched the trial on television in Bosnia....