More than 15 years after the brutal Bosnia war, the world is reliving those bloodthirsty events with the‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Ratko Mladic’s trail, which began in The Hague on Wednesday.

The court proceedings will certainly be traumatic for hundreds of thousands who lost their loved ones to the brutality and bullets of Mladic, the late Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic. But the fact that a closure is near to those three years of horror must surely be relieving to many of them.

That there is not an iota of remorse in Maldic is evident from his behaviour in Court. His throat-slitting gesture to a woman who had lost her son, husband and brothers in Srebrenica reflects that he is not above the level of a predatory animal. Taking human lives seems to be a natural act for him.

Milosevic and Karadzic were no different from him. But there is some satisfaction to be gained from their being brought to justice before the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague at least now.

At times, some years ago, it seemed like Karadzic and Mladic would never be nabbed. The hunt for these two often reached a dead end. But the patience of those hunting for them and the international community finally paid off.

There is little doubt that Mladic, Karadzic and Milosevic are among the vilest men in the history of mankind. Death helped Milosevic escape humiliation. But Mladic, the mastermind of the senseless massacre of 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica, will now have to be dealt with harshly. In fact, a major part of the responsibility for the killing of 100,000 people in the war that also left 2.2 million homeless lies on his head.

It’s time he paid for his blood lust even though many years have gone by since the end of the war as hundreds of thousands will not be able to forget the horror of those times. The verdict of the trail may be a kind of exorcism of the demons of that horrible war. But whether the outcome of the trail court will offer ample recompense to the families of those killed will be a matter for debate for a long time to come after judgment day.

The world has witnessed many horrors in the 20th century. The two World Wars, the Indo-China wars, the Rwandan massacre and so many other horrifying chapters in the history of the century that have gone by proves that awareness, knowledge, progress and prosperity have not ended the lust in man for power and blood. And the massacres of the Balkans war will not teach edifying lessons to humanity which believes that power and strength flow from the barrels of guns. All the great talk of peace and coexistence are meaningless and forgotten seconds after they are spoken. And this means more Srebrenicas are coming. The judges at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague are bound to remain busy in the coming years.