UN Court Urged to Hospitalise Ratko Mladic in The Hague

Ratko Mladic. Photo: MICT

Ratko Mladic’s defence team told BIRN on Wednesday that the former Bosnian Serb Army commander, who is appealing against his conviction for genocide and other wartime crimes, should be hospitalised immediately in The Hague because his health condition is now “disastrous”.

Defence lawyer Branko Lukic explained that medics from Serbia suspect that Mladic has internal bleeding, and claimed that medics at the UN Detention Unit “are simply not reacting”.

“We do not even receive the reports we are supposed to receive regularly, so we do not have a clear insight, we just see that something is wrong, and the documentation, which is now outdated, shows that his condition is disastrous and we think it is getting worse every day,” said Lukic.

“That is why we asked that he be treated outside the Detention Unit as he obviously does not get adequate medical care there,” he alleged.

The defence submitted a motion to the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals to request Mladic’s hospitalisation on Tuesday.

Another member of the defence team, Miodrag Stojanovic, said that Mladic was currently being treated at the UN Detention Unit’s infirmary.

The defence has repeatedly asked in recent years for Mladic to be sent for treatment in Russia, but this is the first time that it has been asked for him to be hospitalised in The Hague, near the Detention Unit, Stojanovic said.

“He is weak, he has lost weight, he cannot eat, he cannot stand due to anaemia, so his health condition is very, very serious,” he added.

In an earlier motion to the court, the defence argued that Mladic needed to be hospitalised for his anaemia to be stabilised and due to his low haemoglobin levels.

The defence claimed that the medical experts from Serbia and the US agreed that hospitalisation was necessary because the fall in his haemoglobin levels was “a serious issue which potentially points to a deadly condition and therefore requires an urgent attention”.

But the registrar at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals argued in a motion filed on Saturday that the defence’s request should be rejected.

Registrar Elias Olufemi said he was convinced that the registrar, the Detention Unit and its medical team “have not failed to disclose medical information to Mr. Mladic and that they have not failed to meet their reporting obligations”.

“I am also fully satisfied that the medical care Mr. Mladic receives is adequate and aimed at promptly addressing any health concerns he might have,” Olufemi added.

Mladic, who is 77, has had several serious medical problems while in detention in the Netherlands and has suffered two strokes and a heart attack.

The UN court sentenced him to life imprisonment in November 2017, finding him guilty of genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in 1995, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising the population of Sarajevo during the siege of the city, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Mladic appealed against the verdict, as did the Hague prosecution, which is calling for him to be found guilty of genocide in six other municipalities in 1992.

Last month, the court postponed the appeals hearings until further notice because of travel restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The appeals hearings had already been postponed once before this year because the former Bosnian Serb military chief needed a colon operation.

The president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, Carmel Agius, informed the UN Security Council on Monday that the final verdict in Mladic’s trial will not be delivered until 2021.