Author Description

"Slavenka Drakulic confronts one of recent history's most difficult and important subjects in her new book, They Would Never Hurt a Fly. An examination of the war criminals being prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the book shows Drakulic at her most incisive as she seeks to understand the people behind the horrific crimes committed during the most brutal conflict in Europe in the last fifty years." "Drawing partly on her own observations of the trials, partly on other sources, Drakulic portrays some of the individuals accused of murder, rape, torture, ordering executions, and more during the war that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Notable among them are former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic; Radislav Krstic, the first to be sentenced for genocide; Biljana Plavsic, the only woman accused of war crimes; and Ratko Mladic, in hiding and being tried in absentia. Drakulic also tells the stories of Milan Levar, a war veteran and witness who was murdered when he tried to speak out, and of Mirjana Mira Markovic, the influential wife of Milosevic."--Jacket.