The "unimaginable" horrors of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war were reminiscent of the nightmarish scenes of World War Two, ex-US secretary of state Ms Madeleine Albright told the Hague war crimes tribunal today.
At a landmark hearing to determine sentence for ex-Bosnian Serb president Ms Biljana Plavsic (72), Ms Albright - the most senior US official to testify at The Hague - described her horror when she heard of the killings, rapes, concentration camps and torture of non-Serbs during the Bosnian conflict.
Ms Albright called the photographs from war-torn Bosnia "reminiscent of pictures that reminded one of World War Two".
"I'm very familiar with the horrendous pictures that came out at the time [of World War Two] and it seemed to me a repeat of seeing people herded into buses and trains . . . families separated and horrendous stories coming out in terms of the crimes that were taking place," she said.
"It was unimaginable that these kinds of things could be going on," Ms Albright said as Ms Plavsic listened from the dock.
"It seemed to be being done in a deliberate way, not some accident of a drunken soldier marauding, but part of some kind of plan to eradicate various groups of people".
Ms Albright, whose long-standing support for the Hague war crimes court has earned her the tag "mother of the tribunal", was appearing on the second day of a three-day hearing for the woman once dubbed the "Iron Lady" of the Bosnian war.
Ms Plavsic could face life in prison after pleading guilty in October to a count of crimes against humanity for persecution of Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the conflict that left 200,000 dead or missing.
Ms Plavsic, the highest-ranking figure to admit atrocities and the only woman publicly indicted in the UN tribunal's nine-year history, changed her plea to guilty on one charge of persecution in a move her lawyers say is born of deep remorse.
Other charges against her, including genocide, have been dropped.