Mladic Defence Objects to Trial Start Date
Legal team wants to delay proceedings until end of October.
Mladic Defence Objects to Trial Start Date
Legal team wants to delay proceedings until end of October.
Lawyers for wartime Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic told judges this week that commencing his trial on March 27 would be “almost impossible”.
“Any start before October will be unjust for the defence and for Mr Mladic,” said Branko Lukic, one of Mladic’s lawyers.
He noted the “hundreds of thousands of pages” disclosed by the prosecution that the defence still has to review, and the fact that their team is not yet completed.
“To have any kind of meaningful preparation, any start of trial before the end of October this year would be almost impossible,” he said.
Judges set a tentative date of March 27 at the last hearing in December. While they seemed to stick with that date during the January 19 status conference, presiding judge Alphons Orie asked Lukic to be “more specific” about his concerns.
Lukic replied that his team was dealing with “three-and-a-half cases” – the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, events in various Bosnian municipalities and the taking of United Nations hostages.
He added that the defence’s estimate of the time it needed included reading only “the basic documents” needed to participate in the trial.
Judge Orie responded that he “fully appreciated” the amount of material involved, but that Lukic was not expected to read all the documents himself, or in their entirety.
“Of course, we have not decided on what pace [the trial will be conducted] and if it will be interrupted at certain intervals,” the judge said.
A frail-looking Mladic, who was arrested last May 26 after 16 years as a fugitive, sat quietly while his lawyer and the judges discussed numerous procedural issues. When he was finally given a chance to speak, he addressed Judge Orie as “comrade” and complained about his health.
“I am very sick man, not of my own choosing,” Mladic told the bench. “The right side of my body is not fully functional because of a stroke I had two years ago. Of course this is not your fault. Perhaps it was God’s will.”
He also claimed that he was being “charged and tried” by the “same person”, and objected to being brought to the court wearing handcuffs.
Judge Orie responded by saying the bench had medical reports on the accused’s state of health and would use them in whatever decisions they had to make. He also pointed out that Mladic was being charged by the prosecution but tried by the trial chamber, which are separate entities.
Mladic announced that he had two more topics he wanted to discuss – the so-called “Mladic diaries”, and the year 1918.
The diaries are a collection of 18 handwritten wartime notebooks seized from the Belgrade home of Mladic’s wife in February 2010. They have been authenticated and used in several trials at the tribunal since then.
The judge said the diaries were a matter of evidence and thus should not be discussed at a status conference.
The second topic, the year 1918, was a “background evidence” issue and should not be addressed until after the parties filed their pre-trial briefs.
Mladic pressed on, saying, “You see there was an officer, a Serbian….” He continued talking even after his microphone was shut off, and despite Judge Orie’s remonstrations.
“Mr Mladic, would you please behave, would you please stop speaking,” the judge implored.
When Mladic did not stop, he was given a final warning.
“Mr Mladic, if next time… you would continue to interrupt me, you [will] be removed from the courtroom,” Judge Orie said.
Mladic was removed from the courtroom at a July 4, 2011 hearing when he interrupted the judges and refused to listen to the charges against him.
The next status conference is set for February 23.
Mladic was the commander of the Bosnian Serb army from 1992 to 1996, and is alleged to have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Bosnian war. These include the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which resulted in the murder of some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the shelling and sniping campaign against Sarajevo, which killed about 12,000 civilians.
He is also charged with crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer. The indictment against him was recently reduced at the judges’ request, and it now deals with a total of 106 crimes instead of 196, and the number of Bosnian municipalities involved has been cut from 23 to 15.
The core elements of the case – the siege of Sarajevo, the massacre at Srebrenica, crimes committed in various municipalities, and the taking of UN hostages – remains the same, and the indictment will still contain 11 counts.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
