The arrest of General Ratko Mladic for atrocities committed during the Bosnian war is a very welcome development.
Undoubtedly his defence team have an incentive to exaggerate his health difficulties, to seek to avoid or delay extradition to the Hague; but he may genuinely be seriously ill.
We need to hope that his trial can proceed, and that answers will be forthcoming to the murky questions that surround the chain of command and criminal responsibility.
The rapid descent of Yugoslavia from being a seemingly stable and relatively harmonious society into a vicious warzone fractured along ethno-linguistic and religious lines is hard to understand.
How did Mladic evolve so quickly from being a general in the army of the socialist state of Yugoslvia, in command of the 2nd Army District, into being an ultra-nationalist prepared to massacre people who had been his fellow citizens of Yugoslavia?
How did the civil war degenerate so quickly, and why did the multi-national Yugoslavian civic identity prove so fragile?