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Croatians, Serbs and Dutch people among hundreds who descended on resort of Scheveningen to witness history
At 9.20pm the calm of a spectacular sunset over the North Sea in the well-to-do Dutch resort of Scheveningen was shattered by a police helicopter, as it swooped over the town jail and hovered over the dunes.
Its arrival, when the local burghers are normally finishing their seaside strolls, presaged the arrival in custody after a 16-year-manhunt of Ratko Mladic, the fomer Bosnian Serb general charged with some of the worst crimes committed since the second world war.
Within minutes, a cavalcade of black 4x4s had swept along the sea road and into the side entrance of the prison, whose 18ft walls bristled with barbed wire and CCTV cameras. Mladic's arrival meant different things to different people, and besides the international news crews hundreds of people had come to witness the most wanted suspected Balkan war criminal finally enter international custody.
"It feels really unnatural," said Dijana Zupanovic, 46, a Croatian woman clutching a camera, who said Mladic was responsible for killing her 20-year old brother while he was ill in hospital.
"It shouldn't be happening here. He should be judged in his own country."
Just yards from her was a small knot of pro-Mladic supporters: one with a Serbian flag, another with a silver crucifix around his neck, wearing a T-shirt bearing Mladic's face.
"I feel a lot of trauma coming back," said Zupanovic. She gestured towards the pro-Mladic men.
"I can see the Mladic supporters here and it takes me back."
It was also a moment for the Dutch, a nation racked by the inability of their soldiers, serving as United Nations peacekeepers, to prevent the massacre of around 7,500 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
René Jagt, 37, a former private in the Dutch army who was at Srebrenica and had travelled from Lelystad, an hour away, to witness Mladic's arrival, fiddled nervously with his camera as the crowd waited for Mladic to finally enter custody. Jagt was wearing a sweatshirt with the blue beret of the UN peacekeeping force on it and the slogan: "Peacekeeping is not a soldier's job, but only a soldier can do it".
"I was in Bosnia for six months and 17 days," he explained after Mladic had arrived and his worried look had turned almost into a smile. "I was there for peacekeeping. My job was to protect the Muslims there. This feels good. A lot of my colleagues were damaged by Srebrenica, what they saw and what they could not do."
Monique de Vette, 49, a finance director from The Hague, and Edwin Santhegens, 52, a landscape architect, had swapped their usual evening beach walk to watch Mladic be brought in, aware that it was a potential moment of healing for their country.
"I feel like justice is done, not just for the Muslims, but for the Dutch soldiers who were powerless. Many of them are still suffering," said De Vette.
"It is just a coincidence the tribunal is here in The Hague, but it is a good feeling for us," said Santhegens.
"Mladic is responsible for murdering thousands of people just 2,000 kilometres from here. We were stupid to take a role there. We didn't understand the strength of the Serbian armed forces. If there is some justice done here in the Netherlands it will help us and it will help the whole of Europe."
An hour or so after Mladic had entered the jail and the onlookers had drifted home, the unmarked police cars that brought him in left the compound, each passenger wearing a balaclava to disguise his or her identity. As they swung out of the prison grounds the knot of Serbian nationalists screamed abuse at them. On Wednesday, the war crimes prosecutor will set out details of Mladic's case to the world's media and Mladic himself could make his first appearance in court as early as Thursday.