Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic made a throat-slitting gesture to a woman who lost her son, husband, and brothers in the Srebenica massacre at the start of his trial yesterday for some of the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War.

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 – but he still managed to inflame Bosnia’s festering war wounds with the flick of his hand.

Ratko Mladic went on trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal today, 20 years after his troops began ethnically cleansing Bosnian towns and villages of non-Serbs.

Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic has gone on trial at a UN tribunal on 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The UN war crimes court has heard how a Bosnian Serb waiter locked 65 women, children, babies and old men in a house before setting it alight.