Lawyers for former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, serving life imprisonment for genocide, have asked a UN court to release him on “humanitarian grounds” – claiming he has a terminal medical condition and just months to live.
Mladic (83) – known during the Yugoslav war as the Butcher of Bosnia – was found guilty in 2017 of extermination, murder, persecution and forcible transfer in connection with the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the “safe haven” of Srebrenica in July 1995.
He was also convicted of directing the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in which almost 14,000 people died. It lasted a year longer than the siege of Stalingrad and was the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.
Mladic’s application for early release lodged with judges at the international court in The Hague by his long-time legal team, Dragan Ivetic and Branko Lukic, comes just weeks before the 30th anniversary commemoration of the Srebrenica atrocities, on July 11th.
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According to a motion lodged last week with the court and now publicly available on its website, Mladic has been moved to palliative care at the UN detention centre a few kilometres from the court, and has just “months to live”.
[ The Irish Times view from 2021 on Ratko Mladic: held to accountOpens in new window ]
Although the details of his medical condition are redacted from the motion as it appears on the court’s website, it is known that Mladic has suffered two strokes and a heart attack in recent years while incarcerated.
The former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska also had a pacemaker fitted at a Dutch hospital in 2023. However, his condition continues to deteriorate and since then, his kidneys have failed.
“Given Mladic’s incurable condition and his short life expectancy, continued detention serves no legitimate purpose, and amounts to inhumane treatment and punishment,” the motion reads.
As well as saving the UN detention centre the cost of palliative care, his lawyers argue, early release would allow Mladic to explore all his medical options, so as to live out the remaining months of his life with his family.
[ Inside Srebrenica: old scars, new woundsOpens in new window ]
Mladic’s son, Darko, said he had spoken to two doctors on the UN medical team who confirmed the terminal diagnosis. “Our Serbian doctors share the opinion that he has very little chance of surviving until the end of this year,” he added.
Mladic was convicted and sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
This has largely completed its work and has been subsumed into the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), also in The Hague.
The motion is listed on the IRMCT website as an “urgent defence motion”.
However, there is no indication of when the court will rule.
