‘Face to face with horror’: The Tomašica Mass Grave and the Trial of Ratko Mladić

This article focuses on the judicial consideration of the scientic analysis of theTomašica mass grave, in the Prijedor municipality of Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Oen referred to as the largest mass grave in Europe since the SecondWorld War, this grave was fully discovered in September 2013 and the scienticevidence gathered was included in the prosecution of Ratko Mladi ́c before the Inter-national Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Based on the exhaustiveanalysis of all the publicly available trial transcripts, this article presents how theTomašica evidence proved symptomatic of the way in which forensic sciences andinternational criminal justice intertwine and of the impact of the former over the lat-ter on the admissibility of evidence, the conduct of proceedings and the qualicationof the crimes perpetrated