Home Tags Posts tagged with "ratko mladic"

ratko mladic

Former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic has refused to testify after former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic called him as a defense witness at his war crimes trial at The Hague.

It was the first time Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic had appeared together in public since the end of the 1990s war in Bosnia.

Denouncing the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal as “satanic”, Ratko Mladic said testifying could harm his own case.

Both men deny charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In his case, Radovan Karadzic faces 11 charges, including genocide relating to the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Radovan Karadzic’s lawyer argued that Ratko Mladic was “the one person in the whole world who knows best what happened in the war in Bosnia” and that Karadzic was asking him to do his best to testify and to tell what had occurred.

Ratko Mladic initially refused to take the oath, saying: “Your subpoenas, your platitudes, your false indictments, I do not care one bit about any of it.”

He added: “I do not recognize this hate court. It is a satanic court.”

The judge warned him he could be held in contempt, with a possible jail term of up to seven years.

The session was then adjourned, apparently so Ratko Mladic’s dentures could be retrieved from his cell.

Ratko Mladic has refused to testify after Radovan Karadzic called him as a defense witness at his war crimes trial at The Hague

Ratko Mladic has refused to testify after Radovan Karadzic called him as a defense witness at his war crimes trial at The Hague

On the court’s return, the judge advised Ratko Mladic he was not obliged to answer questions if he thought the answers would incriminate him.

Radovan Karadzic then addressed Ratko Mladic in person, saying: “Good morning general, sir.”

Ratko Mladic did answer Radovan Karadzic’s first question – listing the posts and dates of his military career.

But following the second question – Did you ever inform me that prisoners from Srebrenica would be, were being or had been executed? – Ratko Mladic said: “I refuse to testify on the grounds of my health and because it may prejudice my rights as an accused.”

Lawyers representing Ratko Mladic say he suffers from a memory disorder that makes it hard for him to differentiate between truth and fiction.

The judge ruled Ratko Mladic would not be compelled to answer.

Radovan Karadzic read out his remaining questions, but received the same reply.

Ratko Mladic again asked if he could read out a seven-page statement but was refused. He denounced the court again as the session was adjourned.

Radovan Karadzic had been hoping his former ally’s answers would support his claims that the orders to commit war crimes did not come from him.

The key charges facing Radovan Karadzic relate to Sarajevo and Srebrenica.

The siege of Sarajevo lasted for more than three-and-a-half years – starving the capital of food and power.

Radovan Karadzic is alleged to have orchestrated the shelling of Sarajevo, and the use of 284 UN peacekeepers as human shields in May and June 1995.

In the Srebrenica enclave, Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-defended safe area in the worst atrocity in Europe since the end of World War Two.

More than 7,500 Muslim men and boys were killed.

Ratko Mladic was the general in charge of the troops.

His trial is being conducted simultaneously at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in 2008 after 13 years on the run.

He had been found living in disguise in Belgrade, under a false name and working as a New Age healer.

Ratko Mladic was on the run for 16 years before being arrested in 2011 in northern Serbia, where he had also been living under an assumed name.

When Bosnia-Hercegovina became an independent state in 1992, Radovan Karadzic declared the creation of the independent Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina (renamed Republika Srpska) with its capital in Pale, a suburb of Sarajevo, and himself as head of state.

[youtube vcTTrTgoVjA 650]

Elvedin Pasic is the first witness who has taken the stand in the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic.

Elvedin Pasic held back tears as he described surviving a mass killing in 1992 in the Bosnian village of Grabovica.

He told the International Criminal Court at The Hague how Bosnia’s ethnic groups lived in peaceful coexistence until the outbreak of war in the 1990s.

General Ratko Mladic is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ratko Mladic, 70, denies the charges, which date back to the 1992-95 Bosnian War.

He was on the run for 16 years before his arrest and is one of the last key figures wanted for war crimes during the Bosnian War.

General Ratko Mladic is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity

General Ratko Mladic is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity

The trial was halted in May because of “irregularities” by the prosecution.

Some of the relatives of victims and survivors of the war have expressed concern that if the trial takes too long, Ratko Mladic, who has suffered from heart problems, will die before a verdict is reached.

Elvedin Pasic, 34, is a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) from the village of Hvracani in northern Bosnia. He was a teenager during the war.

He told the court: “Before the war we had a great time. We were playing basketball and football, we used to do everything together. Muslim, Croats and Serbs, we were all having a great time, respecting each other.”

Things began to change in the spring of 1992, he said, when as a 14-year-old boy he first noticed a convoy of soldiers in the uniform of the Yugoslav national army giving Muslims the three-fingered Serbian salute.

Elvedin Pasic went on to describe how bombs were falling on his area during the war and his village was overrun.

He was separated from the other men in his family and later survived the execution of around 150 people in the northern Bosnian village of Grabovica.

Later this week, the court is due to hear from the retired British general, Sir Richard Dannatt, who served as deputy commander of NATO’s force in Bosnia.

However, the Mladic defense team has called for his expert evidence to be thrown out.

There will also be an anonymous witness who survived the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. He is expected to tell the court how he saw prisoners being lined up in groups of 10 and executed.

Around 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica were killed after the town was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in July of that year – in what was the worst atrocity in Europe since the end of World War II.

 

The trial of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic has been suspended until further notice, the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia announces.

Ratko Mladic’s trial was due to resume on 25 June after it was halted in May.

Monday’s suspension is a result of an error in the disclosure of documents to the defense, the court in The Hague said in a statement.

Ratko Mladic, 70, denies 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity dating back to the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.

The trial of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic has been suspended until further notice

The trial of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic has been suspended until further notice

The trial was first halted in May when it first emerged that the prosecution had not disclosed evidence to the defense.

Ratko Mladic is the last of the key figures wanted for war crimes during the Bosnian War.

On the run for 16 years before his arrest, Ratko Mladic has refused to enter a plea.

Some of the relatives of victims and survivors of the war have expressed concern that if the trial takes too long, Ratko Mladic, who has suffered from heart problems, will die before a verdict is reached.

 

General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander, is set to go on trial on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide.

Ratko Mladic, 69, is the last of the main protagonists in the Balkan wars of the 1990s to face an international trial in The Hague.

He is accused of orchestrating the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim boys and men at Srebrenica in 1995.

Ratko Mladic calls the accusations “monstrous” and the court has entered a “not guilty” plea on his behalf.

He spent 15 years on the run before being apprehended by Serb forces last May and sent to The Hague.

He has been awaiting trial in the same prison as his former political leader Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested in 2008 and is now about half way through his trial on similar charges to General Ratko Mladic.

In the hours leading up to the opening of proceedings, members of the Mothers of Srebrenica group gathered for a vigil outside the court.

General Ratko Mladic is set to go on trial on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide

General Ratko Mladic is set to go on trial on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide

Judicial authorities have rejected defense calls to delay proceedings, most recently a petition to have the Dutch presiding Judge Alphons Orie replaced on grounds of alleged bias.

The number of crimes of which Ratko Mladic stands accused has been almost halved to speed up his trial.

Ratko Mladic is accused of committing genocide and other crimes against Bosnian Muslims and Croats in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing that began in 1992 and climaxed in Srebrenica in 1995.

Then, Serb fighters overran the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia – supposedly under the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers. Men and boys were separated off, shot dead and bulldozed into mass graves – later to be dug up and reburied in more remote spots.

Ratko Mladic is also charged in connection with the 44-month siege of Sarajevo during which more than 10,000 people died.

These were the worst atrocities in Europe since the end of World War II.

Over 200 hours, the prosecution will make its case against General Ratko Mladic, taking testimony from more than 400 witnesses.

Pre-trial hearings have been characterized by ill-tempered outbursts from Ratko Mladic, who has heckled the judge and interrupted proceedings.

“The whole world knows who I am,” he said at a hearing last year.

“I am General Ratko Mladic. I defended my people, my country… now I am defending myself.”

The case has stirred up strong emotions among watching survivors, with some shouting “murderer” and “killer” from the court gallery.

Ratko Mladic suffered at least one stroke while in hiding and remains in frail health.

The architect of the Balkan wars, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, died in detention in his cell in 2006, before receiving a verdict.

Ratko Mladic charges

• Counts 1/2: Genocide of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Srebrenica

• Count 3: Persecutions

• Counts 4/5/6: Extermination and murder

• Counts 7/8: Deportation and inhumane acts

• Counts 9/10: Terror and unlawful attacks

• Count 11: Taking of UN hostages