Ratko Mladic, a notorious Bosnian-Srb military leader who oversaw the massacre at Srebrenica in the 1992-95 Yugoslav wars, was requested by a UN war crimes court to be released early to Serbia on medical grounds.
The court that is in charge of handling the remaining cases from the Yugoslavian war crimes tribunal, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, announced on Tuesday that Mladic’s condition did not meet the “acute terminal illness” requirement for early release.
In 2017 for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes, Mladic, dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia,” received a life sentence. He claimed that he only had a few months to live and that he should be freed on June 3, 2025.
In a 12-page decision released on Tuesday in The Hague, Santana stated, “I acknowledge that Mladic’s current condition, which requires dependency on others for daily activities, is precarious.”
Mladic continues to receive incredibly thorough and tender care, as well as numerous medical reports that support it.
The information I have is shown to support Mladic’s claim that his release was not justified by the compelling humanitarian circumstances that he invoked.
Mladic, 83, was given a sentence by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his part in the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo.
In Srebrenica, Bosnian-Serb forces killed 8, 000 Muslim men and boys in July that year.
Bosnian Serbs sought to evict Serbs from the country’s two other major ethnic groups, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks, during the bloody crescendo of the Bosnian war, which erupted during Yugoslavia’s dissolution. The Bosnian conflict, prior to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, was regarded as the most bloody conflict in Europe since World War II’s conclusion.
Lawyers have long characterized Mladic as frail and sick. According to a filing seen by the AFP news agency, they claimed in their most recent request that he had an incurable illness and that “his remaining life expectancy is measured in months.”
In 2017, his defense first requested a temporary release due to medical issues.
Santana argued that Mladic’s continued confinement was neither “inhumane nor degrading.”
After serving 16 years on the run in Serbia, Mladic was detained and is currently serving time in The Hague.
Source: Aljazeera
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