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There are some places on our planet whose name, in humans’ perception, shall be always associated to an intimate and deep pain. A pain that the passing of time cannot mitigate and must not delete. Places in which some men decided to become torturers of their own siblings after having tried hard to trample on their dignity.This is what happened also at Srebrenica, where in July 1995 more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnian people between 14 and 65 years old have been exterminated by Serbian-Bosnian troops under the command of General Ratko Mladic while children, women and old men were to suffer endless violence. Thousands of defenceless civilians, first betrayed by the withdrawal of the UN troops which were supposed to grant their safety, then slaughtered by Belgrade’s soldiers. Their bodies were thrown into dozens of mass graves. For this reason, many relatives are still waiting to know where they can mourn for their dead.”Crime against humanity”: this is how the Blessed John Paul II described it. It was the umpteenth (and certainly not isolated) act of a barbarian initiative that we cannot even define as a “war” and that lead to the indictment of Ratko Mladic by the International Criminal Court of the Hague for violation of usages and customs of war, crimes against humanity and genocide. According to Mladic and his one and only direct superior, the Serbian-Bosnian President Karadzic, the way to achieve victory was ethnic cleansing, which is what their troops put into practice, leaving behind only death and despair. The atrocities they enacted were so cruel as to drive Europe and the United States, which until that moment had been watching at a distance the Balkan events after the collapse of the ex-Yugoslavia, to intervene directly under the aegis of the UN in the effort to bring back peace in that area. This task is not over yet; it is enough to consider the cyclical tensions that periodically affect the whole region.With Mladic’s arrest, after 16 years in hiding, Serbia “closes one of the most difficult pages of its recent history”, as Serbian First Minister Tadic has emphasised. The Country can now make another decisive step to leave behind its nationalist past whose consequences it still suffers and to which too many Serbians still look with nostalgia. Particularly, it can look trustfully at its own future adhesion to the European Union: an adhesion that most Serbians (rightly) consider as the one and only way to improve their economy – which is more and more short of breath – and give a less tricky future to the country. The apprehension of the former Serbian-Bosnian commander was one of the essential requirements which had been established by Brussels to continue the dialogue with Serbia, a country which, by the way, has a strong need for international support not to remain isolated in the Balkan scenario and to obtain an endorsement of its positions vis-à-vis Pristina as far as Kosovo is concerned. The Court of the Hague will have many questions to ask to Mr. Mladic to shed light upon one of the darkest periods of the history of our Continent in the last hundred years, of which many chapters are still to be written and to be understood.Mladic’ arrest (who, for more than 15 years, could count on several forms of connivance, both inside and outside his country, which have protected his hiding) for sure cannot give back peace to those who bear in their bodies, but especially deep in their hearts, the marks of his foolishness. Nonetheless, it can make hope in a better future of reconciliation the generations which have survived to that exterminating foolishness. This would be a great gift the Balkan countries can make to the new European Union of the Third Millennium.