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Ivana Ramic, the spokesperson for the First Basic Court in Belgrade, told BIRN that the 10 defendants had been cleared on Tuesday because “the statute of limitations regarding the criminal prosecution has completely expired”.
Stanko Ristic, Ljiljana Vaskovic, Borislav Ivanovic, Predrag Ristic, Sasa Badnjar, Ratko Vucetic, Tatjana Vaskovic Janjusevic, Bojan Vaskovic, Marko Lugonja and Blagoje Govedarica were all acquitted.
They had been accused of helping Mladic in his attempts to evade capture at various periods of time between 2002 and 2006, although they knew that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY had issued an arrest warrant for him.
“The prosecution has the right to file an appeal against the verdict,” Ramic said.
The original indictment alleged that Bosnian Serb Army officer Jovo Djogo was the main organiser of the attempts to conceal Mladic, but the defendant died during the trial.
Mladic was eventually arrested in 2011 in the village of Lazarevo near Zrenjanin in northern Serbia after 16 years on the run.
He is now on trial at the ICTY for genocide in seven Bosnian municipalities in 1992, genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
