'Butcher Of Bosnia' Not Tied To Srebrenica Killings, Lawyers Say

Genocide charges against former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic are "made out of thin air", his lawyers told a UN court Tuesday as he appealed his conviction over the wars that shattered Yugoslavia in the 1990s

The Hague, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Aug, 2020 ) :Genocide charges against former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic are "made out of thin air", his lawyers told a UN court Tuesday as he appealed his conviction over the wars that shattered Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The 78-year-old Mladic was in particular "not tied" to any of the deaths in the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995, defence lawyers told the court in The Hague.

His counsel also argued that Mladic was at risk of a "miscarriage of justice" because he was mentally unfit for the two-day appeal hearing against his 2017 conviction and life sentence.

Mladic was found guilty of genocide over the Srebrenica massacre, in which some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed, and for crimes against humanity and war crimes over the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

The once-feared general dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia" appeared in court looking frail. He initially wore a surgical mask because of coronavirus restrictions but later removed it.

"I submit that the charge of genocide was made out of thin air," defence lawyer Dragan Ivetic told the court, calling for a full acquittal of Mladic.

"Any killings that happened outside of combat in Srebrenica were reprehensible but they were not tied to Mr Mladic." Ivetic said judges at the original trial "failed to establish the number of victims and their relation to any crime, let alone genocide." - 'Miscarriage of justice' - Mladic will himself be allowed to speak for 10 minutes on Wednesday. He had to be dragged out of the court in 2017 after an outburst in which he accused the judges of lying about his health.

The hearing had already been delayed several times since March after Mladic needed an operation to remove a benign polyp on his colon, and then because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mladic's lawyers said they were taking part under protest on Tuesday after judges earlier this week rejected a bid to postpone it pending a fresh medical assessment.

"This hearing today is inappropriate and threatens... a miscarriage of justice," Ivetic told the court.

"I am unable to meaningfully gain instruction from Mr Mladic, or be assured that he is able to meaningfully follow proceedings.

" Mladic was captured in 2011 after years on the run and sentenced to life behind bars by the now-closed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

This included genocide committed by his forces in the small eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, Europe's worst bloodshed since World War II.

About 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million others displaced in the Bosnian war, which erupted as communal rivalries tore Yugoslavia apart after the fall of communism.

However his lawyers told the UN's International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals -- which handles cases left over from the Yugoslav tribunal -- that the killings in Srebrenica were by rogue forces and that he was not in the area at the time.

They said the original judgment was "replete with errors", including linking Mladic to crimes committed in 1991 before he was in the chain of command, and to crimes allegedly carried out by his subordinates.

- COVID stops protest - Mladic's son Darko said the former military chief "hasn't been able to prepare" because of his health and because lawyers had been unable to visit him.

"He doesn't have the energy needed for work of this kind and there are questions about how well his memory is working," Darko Mladic told AFP.

Mladic was the military face of a trio led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in his cell in The Hague in 2006 before his trial had finished, while Karadzic is serving a life sentence for genocide in Srebrenica and other atrocities.

The "Mothers of Srebrenica", a group of women related to victims of the massacre who have for years protested outside court, did not attend Tuesday's hearing for the first time, due to the pandemic.

"We hope Mladic will be found guilty for genocide in other towns as well, not just those in Srebrenica," Munira Subasic, president of the main Mothers of Srebrenica association, told AFP.