Follow Up

Iconic Bosnian Teen Speaks on Mladic

Satisfied with arrest, but can never have closure.

Sead Bekric, blinded by artillery fire when he was 14, helped raise awareness of the atrocities being committed against Bosnian Muslims during the war. Now, living in Florida with his fiancée and two kids, he says he's shocked but satisfied that Serbian General Ratko Mladic will go before a tribunal in The Hague to answer for the violence committed against him and his countrymen. Still, Bekric says, when “you go through the horror that we went through and losing our loved ones through horrible crimes, you'll never have closure." A photo of Bekric made the cover of Newsweek in May 1993, and he was on television news shows around the world. An American woman, Claire Halasz, was moved by Bekric's story, and worked to bring him to her home in California, where doctors reconstructed his face—though not his sight. He lives in Tampa, where he is involved with organizations for the blind and active in the area's large Bosnian community.