The conviction of Ratko Mladic was overdue justice, but the full reckoning with the Serbian political project that he took to its genocidal extreme is still nowhere to be found.
The UN court in The Hague convicted former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic of the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
During a four-year trial, the Hague Tribunal has heard powerful and strongly-contested arguments about whether Ratko Mladic is guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity or whether he simply defended Bosnia’s Serbs.
When Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, who faces judgment this week, met frightened Bosniaks after his forces took Srebrenica in 1995, he told them they wouldn’t be harmed - but then the massacres began.
Serbia’s prosecution told BIRN that the indictment of 11 people who allegedly helped Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic hide in Belgrade while he was a fugitive has been declared a state secret.
Ratko Mladic’s defence has asked the Hague Tribunal to hold an urgent session to discuss the former Bosnian Serb military chief’s poor state of health ahead of his trial verdict on November 22.
Mladic’s defence lawyers have repeated their request for the Hague Tribunal to postpone the pronouncement of the first-instance verdict on November 22 until it has been determined whether the former Bosnian Serb military chief is mentally and physically capable of participating in his trial, and have demanded an urgent hearing.
The remains of a Bosniak couple who got married in Srebrenica during wartime and were then both killed in the 1995 massacres have been identified by forensic experts.
The Hague Tribunal prosecution called on the judges to reject a request from former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic’s defence to postpone the verdict in his trial because of his poor health.
The former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic’s defence asked the Hague Tribunal to postpone his verdict, which is due on November 22, until Serbian doctors confirm he is not seriously ill.
The first-instance verdict in the trial of the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic, who is accused of genocide and large-scale persecution during the Bosnian war, will be delivered next month.