‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Ratko Mladic have to be free of jail instantly as a result of 84-year-old is nearing dying, his legal professionals say
Lawyers for a convicted war criminal dubbed the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ have asked for his release, saying he is seriously ill and close to death after suffering a stroke.
Ratko Mladic, 84, was convicted of genocide nine years ago and is serving a life sentence in The Hague.
His defence team on Friday said the war criminal is ‘in a state of advanced, irreversible medical decline resulting from a medical incident … and is approaching the end of his life’.
His lawyers hope to secure his provisional release to allow the former Bosnian Serb military commander’s transfer to Serbia for medical treatment, according to the motion dated April 30.
Mladic’s son Darko Mladic told Bosnian Serb public television on April 15 he had received information on his father’s health via a UN-authorised doctor, who he said informed him his father had suffered ‘a silent (minor) stroke’.
A UN tribunal in 2017 sentenced Mladic to life imprisonment for genocide and war crimes during Bosnia’s 1990s war, which claimed an estimated 100,000 lives.
The verdict was confirmed on appeal in 2021.
One of the crimes ascribed to him was the July 1995 massacre of approximately 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in the eastern Srebrenica region.
Ratko Mladic (pictured in 2021) was convicted of genocide nine years ago and is serving a life sentence in The Hague
This file photo taken in Sarajevo on August 10, 1993 shows Commander of Serbian forces in Bosnia General Ratko Mladic (C) arriving at the airport of Sarajevo in order to negociate the withdrawal of his troops from Mount Igman
A Bosnian Muslim woman cries between graves of her father, two grandfathers and other close relatives, all victims of Srebrenica genocide
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (R) and his war-time commander Ratko Mladic talk to each other on Vlasic mountain, in the Dinaric Alps, in this 1995 file photo
The perpetrators then dumped their bodies into mass graves, which they later dug up with bulldozers, scattering the remains among other burial sites to hide the evidence of their war crimes.
It was the worst massacre on European soil since World War II.
After the war in Bosnia ended, he went into hiding and was finally arrested in 2011 and handed over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia by the then-ruling pro-Western government of Serbia.
However, most Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials still celebrate Mladic and wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic as national heroes.
They continue to downplay or even deny the Srebrenica killings and offend the massacre victims and survivors.
Mladic’s defence counsel said he had suffered ‘an acute neurological/medical episode characterised by sudden total aphasia’ or loss of the ability to speak, and was having difficulty swallowing as evidenced from a video call with his son, which had led to his emergency hospitalisation.
‘Doctors have offered reports that confirm the fact that Mr Mladic’s condition is serious, life-threatening … and such that it cannot be adequately treated in the hospital prison,’ his defence team stated in the motion.
In late April, several associations representing Bosnian victims of the 1992-1995 war urged the international court not to authorise Mladic’s transfer to Serbia.
Srebrenica Massacre: 8,000 men and boys loaded onto trucks and killed by firing squad as they watched diggers plough graves
More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys perished in 10 days of slaughter after Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic on July 11, 1995.
It is the only episode of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war to be defined as genocide by two UN courts.
Serb captors had promised a prisoner exchange.
But when the soon-to-be victims clambered off trucks with other Muslim captives, they saw only a green hillside covered with bodies.
In the next hours, first under the July sun and then, at night, by the headlights of two industrial diggers, as many as 3,000 Muslim men captured when Serbs overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica were gunned down.
The body of a victim of the Srebrenica massacre lies in a mass grave in Budak, some 500 metres away from Potocari
Mladic visited a warehouse where the Muslims were being held and told the group they would be exchanged for Serb prisoners of war.
But instead of heading to the front line, they were taken to a sweltering sports hall in Krizevci, about 22 miles north of Srebrenica. Through the night, bus after bus arrived.
The sports hall was roughly 600 square yards and four to five men were packed into a square yard, for a total of 2,400-3,000.
The men rested on each other. Those who couldn’t sit, stood. Mladic appeared again on July 14, three days after the fall of Srebrenica. The general, accompanied by aides, greeted the prisoners by saying, ‘Hello, neighbors.’
‘We started yelling at him, ‘Why are you suffocating us here? Better kill us all,” Suljic said.
Finally, the prisoner exchange was said to be ready. Men were given water for the first time since arriving in Krizevci.
Then, they were placed in two small trucks with 10 to 15 men a truck. As the open-back trucks left, they were followed by a red car.
When they arrived at their destination, they were told to get out onto the grass and stand with their backs to the the soldiers. There were two firing squads of five soldiers each, armed with automatic rifles.
A mass grave on a hill overlooking the Memorial and Cemetery in Potocari, which is still being processed by the ICMP (International Commission for Missing Persons in the former Yugoslavia)
In intervals between the shooting, a Serb soldier walked among the bodies and finished off those still moving with a pistol shot to the head.
Thirty feet away, an industrial digger was preparing a mass grave. Group by group, trucks brought prisoners, who were gunned down in turn. When it became too dark to see, the soldiers used the headlights of two backhoes.
The International Red Cross has said 8,000 of the 42,000 people in Srebrenica before its fall to Serbs remain unaccounted for.
US spy photos have indicated mass graves around Nova Kasaba, west of Srebrenica. Madeleine Albright, US ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council as many as 2,700 people might be buried there.
The Serbs deny mass executions, suggesting the remains are those of some of 3,000 Bosnian government soldiers killed defending Srebrenica.
The Serbs have rejected UN demands for access to the area, though journalists who have slipped in have reported evidence of human remains.
