Mladic Repeats Request for Six-Month Trial Delay
Defence says decision not to grant longer adjournment was made “in haste and error”.
Mladic Repeats Request for Six-Month Trial Delay
Defence says decision not to grant longer adjournment was made “in haste and error”.
Defence lawyers for former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic have repeated their request for a six-month trial suspension and asked judges to reconsider their decision to hear the first prosecution witness on June 25.
The first witness was originally slated to begin testifying on May 29, but Mladic’s trial was adjourned on May 17, after two days of opening statements from the prosecution because prosecutors had mistakenly failed to disclose thousands of documents to the defence. Because of the disclosure issue, the defence team asked for a six-month trial suspension.
In their ruling on May 24, judges announced that while the defence team might need more time to prepare, the failure to disclose evidence had very limited impact in some instances, and that a six-month postponement would not be granted. (See Date Set for First Mladic Witness.)
On May 30, Mladic’s lawyers filed a new request asking judges to “reconsider” their decision because it was “made in haste and in error” and without “taking into account any input from the defence on these issues”.
The defence team also cast doubt on the competence of the prosecution.
“[I]t is the prosecution that consistently misrepresented the status of disclosures, and been in error as to the same, and the defence research and documentation has been proven to be accurate even in the face of initial prosecution denials,” the defence team stated.
The lawyers argued that a decision to start witness testimony on June 25 could imply a bias against the defence. It “has the effect of appearing to a reasonable third party consistent with, at the very least, an error resulting in the rush to trial, or in the worst – the existence of actual chamber bias against the defence”, the defence lawyers said.
If the chamber declines to reconsider it, the defence will ask to appeal the decision, the lawyers added.
Prosecutors allege that Mladic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb army from 1992 to 1996, planned and oversaw the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that ravaged the city and left nearly 12,000 people dead.
Mladic’s army is accused of deliberately sniping at and shelling the city’s civilian population to “spread terror” among them.
He faces charges of genocide for his alleged role in the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, during which more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed.
The indictment – which contains 11 counts in total – alleges that Mladic was responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which “contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory.”
After 16 years as a fugitive, Mladic was arrested in Serbia on May 26, 2011.
Rachel Irwin is IWPR Senior Reporter in The Hague.
