There are no grounds for appeal against the recent ICTY ruling on one trial for former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic.

By Geraldine Coughlan in The Hague

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“It’s at the judges’ discretion,” ICTY prosecutor Serge Brammertz told journalists in The Hague on Wednesday. Judges rejected the prosecution request for two separate trials. One for Srebrenica; one for Sarajevo. Mladic, 69, was arrested in May and transferred to The Hague after 16 years on the run.

Final say
"We are in a system where judges have the final say. Different opinions are no grounds for appeal, you need a legal basis," said Brammertz. But no legal point or factual error to provide enough basis for an appeal against ruling out a split trial could be pinpointed by the prosecution team.
In the hope that two trials would be wrapped up more quickly than one, Brammertz asked the court in August for the trial to be split in two. One trial dealing solely with genocide at Srebrenica; the second with the  44-month siege of Sarajevo which claimed some 10,000 lives, crimes committed in other Bosnian municipalities, and the kidnapping of UN personnel.

Questions
But the court rejected the demand last week, saying two separate proceedings "could prejudice the accused, render the trial less manageable and less efficient, and risk unduly burdening witnesses."
But the fact that the prosecution will not appeal against the ICTY’s decision not to split the Mladic trial, raises many questions.
Not least - shouldn’t the prosecution try to explore all avenues in pursuit of opportunities to challenge the ICTY decision? If not, doesn’t this defeat the purpose of the exercise of international justice?