BELGRADE, July 30. /TASS/. The family of former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic who is serving a life sentence in The Hague considers the rejection of his appeal to be released for health reasons politically motivated and will continue the fight as long as the general is alive.
"It seems that new rules are being established specifically for General Mladic. We learned about the decision from the media. Neither my father nor his attorney received the decision initially. It was sent to his attorney only after it had already been published on the Mechanism’s (the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, IRMCT - TASS) website, which had never been the court’s practice before," Darko Mladic, the General’s son, told the SRNA news agency.
He pointed out that the president of the Mechanism, Judge Graciela Gatti Santana, is "clearly establishing a new rule for General Mladic," as in several other cases, terminally ill convicts were granted early release.
"As long as he is alive, we will continue to fight for the rights he is entitled to, and the court established by the UN Security Council must respect the rules set by the UN, rather than inventing its own rules based on political needs," Mladic Jr. said.
Earlier, the IRMCT denied an appeal by Mladic’s defense to release the general, who is serving a life sentence, due to health problems. The court said that his health condition is stable, although precarious, and that he is receiving proper care at the UN detention center in The Hague. "Uncontradicted medical opinions indicate that Mladic is nearing the end of his life, a fate that is human," Reuters cited the ruling of the court president Gatti Santana. However, in her words, he has no acute terminal illnesses which would justify his early release. During his imprisonment, Mladic has suffered three strokes and a heart attack. His lawyers argue that the medical care he receives in prison is not adequate. According to the General’s son, doctors treat his chronic pain with simple aspirin. During the pandemic, Mladic was not allowed to see family or lawyers under the pretext of COVID restrictions.
Case around Mladic
Mladic had been on the run for nearly 16 years until he was arrested in Serbia in May 2011 and extradited to The Hague. On November 22, 2017, he was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to life in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity and the violation of laws and customs of war. It took 530 days to review his case, which involved testimonies of 377 witnesses and almost 10,000 pieces of hard evidence being presented.
In March 2018, Mladic’s lawyers appealed against the verdict to the IRMCT, which was mandated to perform the functions carried out previously by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (closed on December 31, 2017) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (closed on December 31, 2015). The defense demanded all the mistakes made during the trial be corrected and Mladic be cleared of the ten counts he had been found guilty of before. The lawyers proposed to review the case anew as an alternative. The prosecution also filed an appeal, demanding Mladic be found guilty of the first charge: genocide in five municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On June 8, 2021, the chamber of appeals of The Hague tribunal upheld the life sentence for Ratko Mladic.