THE HAGUE, March 20. /TASS/. The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals tightened the sentence to former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, aged 73, from 40 years in prison to life imprisonment. Presiding Judge Van Jonsen announced the ruling.

The judges considered the sentence of 40 years of imprisonment that had been earlier issued by the chamber of appeals too mild and sentenced Karadzic to life imprisonment, Jonsen said.

Karadzic, who fled from justice for 13 years, was arrested by Serbian intelligence services in the suburbs of Belgrade in July 2008. The judicial process for him started in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on October 26, 2009. In March 2016, Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment under 10 out of 11 criminal charges, including the Srebrenica genocide.

In April 2018, appeal hearings on Karadzic’s case were carried out in The Hague, during which the prosecutors demanded that the Bosnian Serb political leader be sentenced to life imprisonment, while the lawyers asked the judges to revisit the case or exculpate the politician.