Sick Witness

Considering the fact that the Tribunal will be closed tomorrow due to a UN holiday, prosecutors will present judges with their next witness on Friday, October 25. 

During a short session Prosecutor Camille Bibles informed the Trial Chamber that witness Patrick Rechner, who was due to testify today, was sick, so he was not able to appear in the courtroom.  

“The next Prosecution witness – Jonathan Riley, is arriving at The Hague tomorrow,” Prosecutor Bibles explained. 

Rechner and Riley worked as UN observers in Sarajevo, where the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, captured them and held them hostage in May 1995. 

General Mladic, the then Commander of VRS, is charged, among other things, with taking UNPROFOR members hostage.  

As announced by presiding judge Alphons Orie, as of next week the Tribunal would hold four instead of five hearings per week in Mladic’s case, as per a decision by the Appellate Chamber of the Tribunal. 

The Appellate Chamber accepted an appeal filed by Mladic’s Defence concerning two decisions under which the Trial Chamber previously rejected a request by Defence attorneys to reduce the working week due to the indictee’s deteriorated health condition. Doctors from the Detention Unit supported the Defence’s request. 

The indictment also charges Mladic with genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reached the scale of genocide in seven municipalities, and terror against civilians in Sarajevo.