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Dec. 2, 1995, file photo Bosnian-Serb General Ratko Mladic Image: OLEG STJEPANOVIC/AP/Press Association Images

Mladic trial suspended 'indefinitely' due to 'significant errors' by prosecutors

A new starting date will be established “as soon as possible” but Mladic’s lawyer has asked for a six-month delay.

THE JUDGE IN Ratko Mladic’s war crimes trial has indefinitely delayed the presentation of evidence due to “errors” by prosecutors in disclosing information to defence lawyers.

Presiding judge Alphons Orie said he was delaying the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal case due to “significant disclosure errors” by prosecutors, who are obliged to share all their evidence with Mladic’s defence team.

He said judges are still analysing the “scope and full impact” of the error and aim to establish a new starting date “as soon as possible.” The presentation of evidence was supposed to begin later this month.

Prosecutors had already admitted the errors and did not object to the delay. Mladic’s lawyer has asked for a six-month delay.

Earlier, prosecutors wrapped up their opening statement in the trial by recounting in painstaking and chilling detail the systematic murder by Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Mladic of thousands of Muslim men and boys in Bosnia’s Srebrenica enclave in July 1995, Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.

Exact numbers of the Srebrenica massacre range from 7,000 to 8,000.

“In a period of only five days, from July 12-16, 1995, the armed forces of (Bosnian Serb leader) Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic expelled the civilian population of Srebrenica and murdered over 7,000 Srebrenica men and boys,” prosecuting council Peter McCloskey said.

Mladic’s army “carried out their murderous orders with … dedication and military efficiency,” he added.

Mladic, the 70-year-old former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, showed no emotion on the second day of his genocide trial as McCloskey showed judges a fleeting video of what he said were the bodies executed Muslim men piled in front of a bullet-riddled wall.

On the first day of the trial yesterday, the court’s public gallery was crowded with relatives of the slain men who angrily exchanged hand gestures with Mladic through the bulletproof glass screen separating them.

Today, most of the survivors had left and videos showing a bullish Mladic strutting through the deserted streets of Srebrenica and berating the commander of Dutch UN peacekeepers were greeted largely with silence and occasional murmurs.

One woman, Hatidza Mehmedovic, wept in the court’s lobby during a break in the proceedings.

“I buried both of my sons and my husband. Now I live alone with memories of my children,” she said. “I would never wish even Mladic to go through what I go through. Not Mladic or Karadzic. Let God judge them.”

Indictment

Mladic is accused of commanding Bosnian Serb troops who waged a campaign of murder and persecution to drive Muslims and Croats out of territory they considered part of Serbia. His troops rained shells and snipers’ bullets down on civilians in the 44-month-long siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

He has refused to enter pleas, but denies wrongdoing. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The first witness is scheduled to testify 29 July, although that may be delayed due to problems with prosecutors disclosing evidence to Mladic’s lawyers.

Mladic fled into hiding after the war and spent 15 years as a fugitive before international pressure on Serbia led to his arrest last year. Now he is held in a one-man cell in a special international wing of a Dutch jail.

But the fact that he is jailed and on trial is seen as another victory for international justice and hailed by observers as evidence that – more often than not – war crimes tribunals get their indicted suspects, even if they have to wait for years.

McCloskey outlined how, after overrunning Srebrenica, Mladic’s forces summoned buses and trucks from across Bosnia to transport women and girls out of the enclave and to move captured men to schools and other public buildings. The men were then driven to remote execution locations and gunned down by firing squads and their bodies were plowed into mass graves.

McCloskey said so far the remains – sometimes no more than a couple of bones – of 5,977 victims have been exhumed. He showed photographs of an exposed mass grave to underscore to judges that the victims were not war casualties.

One photo showed a skull, its teeth exposed in an apparent grimace, and its eyes covered by a blindfold. Another gruesome photo showed a pair of hands bound with a strip of cloth behind a body’s back.

-Mike Corder

More: Ratko Mladic goes on trial for war crimes…20 years later>

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8 Comments
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    Mute Andrew Brennan
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    May 17th 2012, 12:11 PM

    More delays for those seeking justice.

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    Mute Liam Ó Néill
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    May 17th 2012, 12:24 PM

    Justice is only really just when administered fairly.

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    Mute #voteNo to Austerity
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    May 17th 2012, 12:59 PM

    Justice delayed is justice denied.

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    Mute Diarmuid Walshe
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    May 17th 2012, 2:42 PM

    These is no such thing as justice.So long as there are politicol implications,people seeking justice are deluded into thinking they will achieve some semblance of something just.
    The reality of the situation is that twenty years after the Dutch forces backed off,the main culprit is in Dutch territory and the system is yet again backing off.Worse still,the prosecutors have made ‘significant disclosure errors’.Pathetic excuse after twenty years getting their case together.

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    Mute Lamb
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    May 17th 2012, 2:58 PM

    Most of these guys are only apprehended decades after they stop inflicting suffering on others, never during their crimes. Then either illness or paperwork holds up their trials, for years in a lot of cases and they die before there is a ruling. Justice is so far away it looks like a dot to them on the horizon.

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    Mute Paul Breen
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    May 18th 2012, 12:02 AM

    Meanwhile in Serbia he’s regarded by many as a hero. It’s like they’re still in the Middle Ages over there.

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    Mute Pádraic O'Callanáin
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    May 22nd 2012, 10:11 PM

    Completely untrue Paul. Have you ever even been to Serbia? Lovely place and such nice people. I have leved here years and love the whole former Yugoslav region. Don’t blacken a nation due to the actions of a few monsters.

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    Mute Diarmuid Walshe
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    May 17th 2012, 2:43 PM

    political *

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