Hearing Interrupted, Mladic is not Feeling Well

The trial of Ratko Mladic was interrupted after one-hour testimony by Prosecution’s military expert Richard Butler, because the indictee did not feel well.

Following the break, Mladic did not appear in the courtroom. His Defence attorney Branko Lukic informed the judges that “the right side of indictee’s body”, in fact arm and leg, “has become numb” and that “he feels big pressure in his right groin.”

Lukic told the judges that the Defence considered “that the trial must not continue in this way” and that Mladic must have “a day or, we now believe, even two days” of rest each week.

“During a few days in the past week we noticed that general Mladic was not capable of following the trial… After speaking to him now, we have found out that he just lies in the detention unit cell, that he has no strength to do anything and that he can neither eat nor drink. He says that he is so exhausted that he cannot function,” attorney Lukic said.

The Trial Chamber chaired by Alphons Orie has rejected two requests by the Defence to reduce the number of working days per week from five to four despite the recommendations by Detention Unit doctors, who said that Mladic was not capable of going through the full working week in the courtroom.

The Defence attorneys appealed the Court’s decision. Their key argument was the fact that the judges had neither reviewed nor taken the medical findings and doctors’ advice into consideration.

“I am telling you that general Mladic appeared at hearings despite my instructions. I will no longer allow him to come to the courtroom when he does not feel capable of doing it,” Lukic said.

Judge Orie warned the Defence by saying that the shortening of the working week was not the topic under discussion, also suggesting that Lukic could not prohibit his client from attending the trial.

Orie said that, after having been examined by a medical nurse, Mladic was sent back to the Detention Unit in Scheveningen and that medical doctors would submit a report about his health condition in the afternoon.

The trial was adjourned, but it will continue tomorrow, September 10, after the judges have studied the doctors’ report.

Mladic’s trial was interrupted for the same reason on Friday, August 23, but it continued after the weekend, when the indictee appeared in the courtroom again.

Prior to his arrest in late May 2011, Mladic suffered three strokes, so the mobility of the right side of his body is reduced. In the meantime, while being held in the Tribunal’s Detention Unit, Mladic underwent medical treatment for pneumonia and less complicated interventions at the Bronovo Hospital at The Hague. Also, he was tested for malignant diseases, but the results came back negative.

During a discussion about his health condition at the beginning of June this year Mladic thanked the Court and Detention Unit medical staff for having “saved his life” and “brought him back from the grave”.

Mladic is charged with genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terror against civilians in Sarajevo throughlong-lasting shelling and sniping, and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.