Mladic Due To Speak To Court In Appeal Against Genocide Sentence

Former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic was due to address a UN court on August 26 as part of a hearing on an appeal against his life sentence for genocide.

According to the appeal process rules, Mladic is allowed to address the court for 10 minutes at the end of the second and final day of the hearing.

On August 25, Mladic’s lawyer Dragan Ivetic told the court that his client was not mentally fit to take part in the appeal hearing. Ivetic told the UN court that there was a risk of a “miscarriage of justice.”

Mladic has challenged his 2017 conviction and life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the war in the former Yugoslavia, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

“I am unable to meaningfully gain instruction from Mr. Mladic, nor be assured that he is able to meaningfully participate and follow” the proceedings, lIvetic said during the first day of the hearing, which was being held partially by videoconference due to coronavirus measures.

Ivetic called for an analysis of 77-year-old Mladic’s fitness to participate. At a hearing last month, Mladic’s legal team warned that the former general could be suffering from early stage dementia.

“It is a denial of due process to sentence or proceed criminally against someone who is incompetent to stand trial,” Ivetic said.

The hearing proceeded despite Ivetic’s objections. Mladic, looking frail, was in court and initially wore a face mask because of coronavirus regulations, before pushing it below his chin and then removing it completely.

Lawyers for Mladic have repeatedly complained about his ill health.

But in a written ruling before the August 25 hearing, judges said that the lawyers hadn’t “substantiated that Mladic is unable to communicate, consult with his counsel, and/or understand the essentials of proceedings.”

The two-day appeal hearing is being held at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals — which deals with cases left over from now disbanded international war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Mladic was captured in 2011 after years on the run. Dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia, he received a life sentence in 2017 for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

This included genocide committed by his Bosnian Serb forces in and around the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in mid-1995, Europe’s worst mass murder since World War II, where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered.

With reporting by AFP, AP, and dpa