On May31st Ratko Mladic arrived at The Hague and immediately was locked up in the Dutch prison used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).[1]
In the five days since his arrest and ordered extradition on May 26th,[2] Mladic appealed the Serbian court’s order of extradition to The Hague. The appeal asserted that he is physically and mentally unfit for trial. On May 31st the appeal was rejected.[3]
The following is a summary of the ICTY charges facing Mladic:
- Genocide and complicity in genocide: for leading Bosnian Serb forces who massacred 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995 and ethnically cleansed towns and villages in Bosnia of non-Serbs throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
- Crimes against humanity by persecution on the basis of religion: for killing, torturing, raping, deporting and illegally imprisoning Muslims and Croats.
- War crimes by extermination, murder and cruel treatment: for widespread killing of non-Serb civilians in towns and villages targeted by Bosnian Serb forces and for the deadly campaign of sniping and shelling of civilians during the 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
- War crimes by taking hostages: for taking hostage United Nations military observers and peacekeepers. [4]
Through his son Mladic has denied that he ordered the massacre at Srebrenica.[5]
Now attention is being paid to how Mladic was able for so long to avoid arrest and whether those who aided his evasion of legal process are liable for crimes.[6]
Mladic still has supporters in Serbia, and on May 29th around 10,000 of them rallied in Belgrade to protest the arrest and threatened extradition of Mladic to the ICTY at The Hague. The crowd also demanded the resignation of the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, whom they called a traitor to Serbia for his willingness to hand over alleged war criminals to the tribunal.[7]
The ICTY has jurisdiction over perpetrators of atrocities committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, including grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide and crimes against humanity. It has indicted 161 ethnic Serbs, Croats and Muslims, the majority of whom are Serbs. The following summarizes the status of these 161 cases:[8]
| Concluded cases: | Convicted & sentenced | 64 |
| Acquitted | 13 | |
| Referred to national court | 13 | |
| Withdrawn/deceased | 36 | |
| SUBTOTAL | 126 | |
| Pending Cases: | Appeal after trial | 16 |
| At trial | 14 | |
| Pre-trial | 4 | |
| At large | 1 | |
| SUBTOTAL | 35 | |
| TOTAL | 161 |
[1] Simons, Mladic Arrives in the Hague, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/europe/01serbia.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print.
[2] See Post: International Criminal Justice: Mladic To Face Charges at ICTY (May 27, 2011).
[3] Carvajal, Mladic Appeals Extradition on Health Ground, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/world/europe/31serbia.html?ref=world; Carvajal, Mladic Extradition Appeal Rejected, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/europe/01serbia.html?hp.
[4] Associated Press, A Summary of War Crimes Charges Against Mladic, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/05/31/world/europe/AP-EU-Mladic-The-Charges-Glance.html?hp; ICTY, Case Information Sheet: Ratko Mladic, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/mladic/cis/en/cis_mladic_en.pdf.
[5] Beaumont & Meikle, Ratko Mladic denies ordering Srebrenica massacre, says his son, Guardian (May 30, 2011), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/ratko-mladic-denies-ordering-srebrenica-massacre.
[6] Carvajal & Erlanger, Serb Fugitve Slowly Starved of Friends and Cash, N.Y. Times (May 29, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/world/europe/30mladic.html?ref=world.
[7] Erlanger, Demonstrators Rally Against Mladic Extradition, N.Y. Times (May 29, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/world/europe/30serbia.html?ref=world.
[8] ICTY, Key Figures, http://www.icty.org/sections/TheCases/KeyFigures; Associated Press, An Overview of the Yugoslav War Crimes Court, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/05/31/world/europe/AP-EU-Mladic-Tribunal-Glance.html?ref=world. See also Post: International Criminal Justice: Introduction (April 26, 2011); Post: International Criminal Justice: The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (May 28, 2011).
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