Mladic: Removed from Courtroom For Laughing

When this witness completed his testimony, the Trial Chamber allowed Mladic to come back to the courtroom in order to follow the testimony of former UNPROFOR officer Pyers Tucker.

At the last hearing witness RM-081 said that he was detained in a secondary school centre in Rogatica, along with hundreds of Muslim civilians, in the summer of 1992 and that members of Serb forces held the detainees in inhumane conditions, beat them up, sexually abused and killed them.

As he said, his two young children were among those being abused, while he “did not have the courage” to ask his wife if she was abused too.

Considering the fact that, due to the protected status of the witness’s identity, Mladic’s Defence attorney Dragan Ivetic cross-examined witness RM-081 at a closed session today, which means that the audience could not hear what was being said in the courtroom. It is unknown why Mladic laughed, although the audience could see that he was laughing.

After the Chamber, chaired by judge Alphons Orie, had removed him from the courtroom, Mladic asked the Chamber via his Defence attorney Miodrag Stojanovic to return him to the Detention Unit, requesting his Defence attorneys not to continue participating at the session.

Stojanovic said in the courtroom that he informed Mladic about the measures that the judges might take in that case, but the indictee responded by saying that “he will start a hunger strike and stop taking his medication, in case other Defence attorneys are appointed to represent him”.

The Defence then stopped cross-examining witness RM-081, as per Mladic’s instructions. His testimony was completed once the Prosecution had made additional questions.

Judge Orie warned the Defence that Mladic’s refusal to appear in the courtroom would be interpreted as a renunciation of his right to attend the trial.

Defence attorney Stojanovic conveyed to the Chamber that Mladic said that he “cannot control his emotions, be it laughter or tears”. Judge Orie responded by saying that “loud laughter in the presence of a witness” constitutes interference with the trial.

The indictment against Mladic, former Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, alleges that he terrorised civilians in Sarajevo through a long-lasting shelling and sniping campaign, persecuted Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and took UNPROFOR members hostages.

British officer Pyers Tucker, former military assistant to UNPROFOR Commander Philippe Morillon, testified that the shelling of Sarajevo from VRS positions was aimed at “terrorising and intimidating” the local population.

“Individual grenades were fired on residential quarters without any visible military purpose… To my understanding, the primary goal was to terrorise the population and force it to leave,” Tucker said.

He confirmed that both Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the then President of Republika Srpska, who is on trial at The Hague as well, controlled the supplies to Sarajevo with water, gas and electricity, depriving the local population of those supplies at their own will despite constant protests by UNPROFOR.

Witness Tucker said that he was in Srebrenica with General Morillon in March 1993 and that he ascertained that the VRS conducted ethnic cleansing in that area, setting houses and households on fire and pressing the Muslim population to move to the Srebrenica enclave, while depriving the enclave of humanitarian convoys at the same time.

Mladic’s Defence is due to cross-examine Tucker tomorrow.
R.M.