balkaninsight.com
<http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/mladic-demands-urgent-hearing-about-his-poor-health-11-09-2017>
Mladic Demands Urgent Hearing About His Poor Health :: Balkan Insight
Radosa Milutinovic
3-4 minutes
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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.
Ratko Mladic in court. Photo: ICTY.
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.
In their motion to the UN court, which was made public on Thursday, the defence
lawyers also asked for Paulus Falke, the doctor at the Hague Tribunal’s
Detention Unit, to be charged with contempt of court.
Mladic’s defence claims that Falke informed the defendant that no doctors from
outside would come to visit him.
According to the defence’s interpretation, this “implied that Falke would make
sure that Serb doctors would not visit Mladic, because he has adequate care in
the Detention Unit”.
“If this is true, such attitude of doctor Falke would compromise the entire
process and trigger serious dilemmas on previous medical reports, particularly
those relevant for Mladic’s capability to stand trial,” the defence said in its
motion.
The defence noted that the Detention Unit manager has previously approved a
visit to Mladic by Serbian doctors, and claimed Fakle’s actions “might
constitute a deliberate obstruction of the legitimate process and Detention
Unit manager’s decision”.
Responding to the Tribunal Secretariat’s insistence that it has proposed “three
groups of time slots” for Serbian doctors to visit Mladic, the defence claimed
that all the time slots come after the verdict, contrary to its request.
The defence also asked for all these issues be discussed on November 22, the
date scheduled for the pronouncement of the verdict in Mladic’s trial, which it
said should be postponed.
The Hague Tribunal prosecution last week called on the judges to reject the
defence’s first request for a postponement
<http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/hague-prosecution-opposes-mladic-trial-verdict-postponement-11-02-2017>
.
It said that the defence lawyers had failed to offer evidence to support their
claim that “the health status of Mladic’s brain has been significantly
deteriorated in the opinion of medical professionals”, and that the general
might be incapable of participating in the trial because of his illness.
Prior to his arrest in late May 2011, Mladic - who is now 74 - had suffered
three strokes.
The defence requested in March that Mladic be granted temporary release and
allowed to go to Russia
<http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/ratko-mladic-asks-for-hospital-treatment-in-russia-03-21-2017>
for treatment, claiming that the treatment of his illness in The Hague had
been inadequate.
The court’s trial chamber rejected the request, saying that Mladic had received
proper treatment in The Hague.
The main reason for turning down the request lay in the judges’ belief that it
was not clear that Mladic would return to The Hague because he had been on the
run for 16 years prior to being arrested.
Mladic is on trial for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, the persecution of
Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which allegedly reached
the scale of genocide in several other municipalities in 1992, terrorising the
population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
