A lawyer for Ratko Mladic has told a Sarajevo newspaper that the former Bosnian Serb general's health has deteriorated.
Branko Lukic says the war crimes suspect has to use a wheelchair to get around the International Criminal Court jail where he is confined. Ratko Mladic is being held in the ICC prison facilities in Scheveningen the Netherlands and has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Mr Lukic told the paper that four Serbian doctors - a respiratory expert, a neurologist, a cardiologist and a psychologist - will travel to the Netherlands and examine the former general next week. Mladic has had three strokes and a 69-year-old was treated for pneumonia last month.
According to Mr Lukic, Mladic wants to speak to doctors in his own language and know if he is capable of following the trial.
(jric)
©Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Email this Bulletin
Printer-friendly version
Wrong court. General Ratko Mladic is facing trial on genocide and war crimes charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) . The ICTY is a court established in 1993 by the United Nations to judge serious violations of international humanitarian law during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
The Hague is also home to several other international courts, among them the International Criminal Court (ICC) , a permanent court established by treaty in 2002. The ICC has no retroactive jurisdiction over crimes committed prior to its founding and thus the ICC has nothing to do with the prosecution of General Mladic.
Hi Anonymous from the USA, thank you for your comment. At first glance there appears to be a mix-up between the two courts, but the report just mentions the ICC prison facilities, not the ICC itself. Mladic has been charged by the ICTY, as the report states.
The apparent confusion stems from the simple fact that there is just a single high-security prison in The Hague, which is used jointly by the local authorities, the ICC, and the ICTY. The detention facility, in the Scheveningen part of the city, is often loosely referred to as "the ICC prison", although that is not factually correct.
As you say, the ICC is not involved in prosecuting General Mladic; the only connection between ICC and ICTY is the shared prison complex in The Hague.