Mladic: Health Limitations

“When working with my previous clients, I would start at 9 a.m. and work until 5 p.m.. However, it is not possible to work with him for more than two hours. After that he is no longer able to follow the conversation or express himself, so we cannot understand him,” Lukic said.  

Lukic expressed hope that, in the few coming days The Hague Prosecution would start disclosing documents to the Defence, so the preparation for the trial could begin.

Ratko Mladic is charged before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, with genocide, crimes against humanity and the violation of the laws and customs of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1992 to 1995.

Mladic was arrested in May this year after being on the run for several years.

Responding to a question about The Hague Prosecution’s proposal for dividing the indictment against Mladic into two parts, one of which would refer to genocide committed in Srebrenica, Lukic said that the Defence would object to the proposal.  

“We think that this would not be in our best interest, as there would be no chronology of events and the logical sequence of events would not be followed. So, the Prosecution asked for it, we shall object to the request and the Court will make a decision,” Lukic said.  

Nerma Jelacic, Spokesperson of the Hague Tribunal, said that the Defence of Mladic would have to submit an official response to the indictment separation motion by August 31 this year. The Tribunal will then render its decision.

Lukic said that, according to the Hague Tribunal’s rules, the Defence could be given “a bit more than a year to prepare for the case of such complexity”.

“We do not know how much time the Trial Chamber will give us, but we hope that we shall get at least that much time considering the complexity of the case, because three cases have, in fact, been merged into this case. We expect that they will give us enough time to prepare for at least one of them,” Lukic said.

E.M.