UN Prosecutors Object to Ratko Mladic’s Release Request
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Prosecutor Katrina Gustafson said on Wednesday said the motion filed by Mladic’s defence lawyers should be rejected because there was no guarantee that the former Bosnian Serb Army commander would return to The Hague if he was released.
Gustafson also insisted that Mladic was getting all the medical care he needed at the UN Detention Unit in the Netherlands.
The prosecutor also said that a similar request by Mladic’s defence was rejected last year, “because the chamber was not convinced that Mladic would return to the Tribunal, considering the fact that he had previously been on the run for 16 years”.
“Mladic was recently sentenced to life imprisonment, which increases the risk of him seeking to flee. The allegations by Mladic’s defence that a guarantee by Serbia [that Mladic would return to The Hague] annulled the danger of his flight are unfounded,” Gustafson added.
She also said that the defence did not mention in its motion what kind of treatment Mladic could get in Serbia which was not already available to him at the UN Detention Unit.
A description of the exact nature of Mladic’s illness was redacted from the motion.
At the beginning of February, Mladic’s defence appealed against an earlier court decision refusing his request for temporary release for medical treatment in Serbia.
The defence also filed a motion asking the judges at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals to quash his verdict and terminate proceedings because Mladic was showing signs of “mild dementia”.
The Hague Tribunal sentenced Mladic in November last year to life imprisonment for the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in 1995, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
He was acquitted of further charges of genocide in several other Bosnian municipalities in 1992.
Even before the verdict, Mladic’s lawyers complained about the medical care their client was receiving at the UN Detention Unit and requested that visits by Serbian and Russian doctors be organised in order for them to determine whether Mladic was getting adequate care.
