THE HAGUE: UN prosecutors will open their case against Bosnian Serb ex-army chief Ratko Mladic on Monday, with their first witness telling how he survived the execution of 150 people by Bosnian Serb soldiers.

Elvedin Pasic was a 14-year-old Muslim boy when Bosnia's bitter war broke out in 1992. When it ended in 1995, some 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million others left homeless.

Now 34, Pasic “will describe the destruction and damage to residential property, attacks on villages (and) the persecution of non-Serbs,” prosecutors said in a witness list before the court.

Having previously testified in other trials, Pasic will recall how he was separated from other men in his family and consequently “survived the execution of around 150 persons in November 1992 in the village of Grabovica,” in northern Bosnia.

His testimony will be followed by that of UN advisor David Harland, who'll talk about the siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, where on average 1,000 shells per day landed between 1993 and 1995, with the exception of lulls during a 1994 cease-fire.—AFP