Ratko Mladic is making his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Mladic shuns 'monstrous' charges
Ex-Bosnian Serb army head Ratko Mladic is due to make his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal.
He was arrested last week in Serbia after 16 years on the run from charges of having committed atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
His lawyer and his family say he is too ill to stand trial but doctors have so far declared him fit to be in court.
He is charged with masterminding the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.
In his first hearing before the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Gen Mladic is to be asked if he understands the charges against him.
The tribunal indictment charges him with genocide, persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, terror, deportation and hostage-taking for his alleged part in a plot to achieve the "elimination or permanent removal" of Muslims from large parts of Bosnia in pursuit of a "Greater Serbia".
As well as Srebrenica, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, Gen Mladic is also charged over the 44-month siege of the capital Sarajevo from May 1992 in which 10,000 people died.
Relatives of some of the victims of the war have been gathering outside the courtroom awaiting Gen Mladic's arrival.
The BBC's Matthew Price at The Hague says Gen Mladic has the right, and may choose, to make some kind of statement which could be short or, in the case of some others who have appeared before this court, quite long.
Gen Mladic will also be asked if he wishes to enter a plea. If he does not enter one within 30 days, the judges will enter pleas of not guilty on his behalf.
The ChargesCounts 1/2: Genocide of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina and SrebrenicaCount 3: PersecutionsCounts 4/5/6: Extermination and murderCounts 7/8: Deportation and inhumane actsCounts 9/10: Terror and unlawful attacksCount 11: Taking of UN hostagesRatko Mladic: The charges
His lawyer in Serbia before he was extradited on Tuesday, Milos Saljic, said Gen Mladic would not enter any pleas at the hearing.
A spokeswoman for the tribunal, Nerma Jelacic, said Serbian lawyer Aleksandar Aleksic had been appointed to represent Gen Mladic for the hearing.
He may then choose a permanent counsel for the trial, or opt to conduct his own defence.
Gen Mladic has been been examined by doctors in the medical facility of the detention unit at The Hague since his arrival on Tuesday night, but Ms Jelacic said it was "nothing unusual" for tests to be carried out and that Gen Mladic would be appearing in court.
On Thursday, Mr Aleksic said of his client: "He has not had proper health care for years and his condition is not good."
Also on Thursday, Mr Saljic said Gen Mladic had been treated for cancer two years ago at a Belgrade hospital.
Mr Saljic has previously been quoted as saying by Serbian media that his client had suffered three strokes and two heart attacks, was too ill to be sent to The Hague and would not live to the end of a trial.
One lawyer representing victims, Axel Hageldoorn, told Associated Press there was concern that "he is too sick to follow the trial to its end and there will be no verdict".
Former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack at The Hague in 2006, four years into his own genocide trial.
War in the former Yugoslavia 1991 - 1999 
The former Yugoslavia was a Socialist state created after German occupation in World War II and a bitter civil war. A federation of six republics, it brought together Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, Slovenes and others under a comparatively relaxed communist regime. Tensions between these groups were successfully suppressed under the leadership of President Tito.
After Tito's death in 1980, tensions re-emerged. Calls for more autonomy within Yugoslavia by nationalist groups led in 1991 to declarations of independence in Croatia and Slovenia. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav army lashed out, first in Slovenia and then in Croatia. Thousands were killed in the latter conflict which was paused in 1992 under a UN-monitored ceasefire.
Bosnia, with a complex mix of Serbs, Muslims and Croats, was next to try for independence. Bosnia's Serbs, backed by Serbs elsewhere in Yugoslavia, resisted. Under leader Radovan Karadzic, they threatened bloodshed if Bosnia's Muslims and Croats - who outnumbered Serbs - broke away. Despite European blessing for the move in a 1992 referendum, war came fast.
Yugoslav army units, withdrawn from Croatia and renamed the Bosnian Serb Army, carved out a huge swathe of Serb-dominated territory. Over a million Bosnian Muslims and Croats were driven from their homes in ethnic cleansing. Serbs suffered too. The capital Sarajevo was besieged and shelled. UN peacekeepers, brought in to quell the fighting, were seen as ineffective.
International peace efforts to stop the war failed, the UN was humiliated and over 100,000 died. The war ended in 1995 after NATO bombed the Bosnian Serbs and Muslim and Croat armie
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