War crimes trial of Ratko Mladic to open in UN court

FORMER BOSNIAN Serb general Ratko Mladic is set to go on trial today for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, after the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia rejected his appeal for a postponement.

The court in The Hague will hear allegations that Mladic (70) and his men conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing across Bosnia that culminated in the killing of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, Europe’s worst massacre since the second World War.

Mladic had demanded the removal of trial judge Alphons Orie, claiming that he was biased because he had already jailed some of Mladic’s subordinates in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war and because he was Dutch – the same nationality as UN peacekeepers overrun at Srebrenica.

“I am not satisfied that Mladic has demonstrated that a reasonable observer . . . would reasonably apprehend bias. I accordingly find Mladic’s request for judge Orie’s disqualification to be unmeritorious,” president of the UN court Theodor Meron said yesterday. “Ratko Mladic’s trial will, therefore, commence on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012, at 9[am] as previously scheduled with the opening statement of the prosecution.” Mladic’s lawyers this week also requested a six-month delay to the trial to study evidence they said the prosecution had delivered too late. The court has not yet ruled on that appeal.

The court indicted Mladic in 1995, but he lived openly in Belgrade until the fall in 2000 of nationalist Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic. Then he went into hiding, with the suspected help of hardline elements of the Serb security services, until he was seized at a cousin’s farmhouse in the Serb village of Lazarevo last May. His capture, and the separate arrest of fellow war-crimes suspect Goran Hadzic, helped Serbia secure EU candidate member status earlier this year.

Mladic’s wartime political ally, Radovan Karadzic, is also being tried at The Hague on similar charges. Milosevic died in his cell at the tribunal in 2006, before a verdict was delivered in his trial.

In pre-trial proceedings, a physically diminished but still combative Mladic rejected the accusations made against him and refused to recognise the court.

The prosecution has trimmed its case to speed up the trial, and Mladic will face 11 charges, including some related to the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, which claimed more than 11,000 lives.