Ratko Mladic’s defense case was to open at the Yugoslav war crimes court yesterday, with the Bosnian Serb former army chief of staff accused of masterminding some of Europe’s worst atrocities since World War II.
Mladic, 72, faces 11 charges ranging from hostage-taking to genocide for his role in Bosnia’s brutal 1992 to 1995 conflict in which 100,000 people died and 2.2 million were left homeless.
An unnamed witness was to take the stand at 9:30am before a three-judge bench of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Photo: AFP
Presiding Judge Alphons Orie has given Mladic’s lawyers 207 hours to question witnesses — the same amount of time given to the prosecution, who finished their case earlier this year, the ICTY said in a statement.
There was no restriction on the number of witnesses defense lawyers could call, it added.
Arrested in Serbia and transferred to the ICTY in 2011, the former Bosnian Serb commander is in particular wanted for his role in the June 1995 massacre of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
There, Mladic’s forces overran lightly armed Dutch UN troops protecting the supposedly safe enclave, before murdering the men and boys, and dumping their bodies into mass graves.
Dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia,” the former Bosnian Serb army general is also held responsible for conducting a campaign against residents of Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo during a 44-month siege.
About 10,000 people were killed, many by snipers and shelling.
He has also been charged for taking hostage a group of more than 200 UN peacekeepers during the conflict, keeping them in strategic locations as “human shields” against NATO air strikes.
Mladic, known for his outbursts in court, has denied the charges. He faces life in prison if convicted.
In January, he refused to testify at the trial of former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic, his political counterpart at the time, repeatedly dismissing the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal as “satanic.”
Karadzic had hoped Mladic would testify that they did not agree or plan to expel Muslims or Croats from areas under Serb control.
The two men could have been tried together had they been arrested around the same time, but Karadzic was arrested in July 2008 and Mladic in May 2011.
Last month, the ICTY upheld the charges against Mladic in a hearing to see if there was enough evidence to continue trying him after prosecutors closed their case.
Judge Orie ruled then that Mladic “had a case to answer on all counts of the indictment.”
China’s military yesterday showed off its machine-gun equipped robot battle “dogs” at the start of its biggest ever drills with Cambodian forces. More than 2,000 troops, including 760 Chinese military personnel, are taking part in the drills at a remote training center in central Kampong Chhnang Province and at sea off Preah Sihanouk Province. The 15-day exercise, dubbed Golden Dragon, also involves 14 warships — three from China — two helicopters and 69 armored vehicles and tanks, and includes live-fire, anti-terrorism and humanitarian rescue drills. The hardware on show included the so-called “robodogs” — remote-controlled four-legged robots with automatic rifles mounted on their
A Philippine boat convoy bearing supplies for Filipino fishers yesterday said that it was headed back to port, ditching plans to sail to a reef off the Southeast Asian country after one of their boats was “constantly shadowed” by a Chinese vessel. The Atin Ito (“This Is Ours”) coalition convoy on Wednesday set sail to distribute fuel and food to fishers and assert Philippine rights in the disputed South China Sea. “They will now proceed to the Subic fish port to mark the end of their successful mission,” the group said in a statement. A Philippine Coast Guard vessel escorting the convoy was
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
STREET WATCH: Residents watched over barricades blocking roads and flew white flags to show that they intended to keep an eye on their neighborhoods France yesterday deployed troops to New Caledonia’s ports and international airport, banned TikTok and imposed a state of emergency after three nights of clashes that have left four dead and hundreds wounded. Pro-independence, largely indigenous protests against a French plan to impose new voting rules on its Pacific archipelago have spiraled into the deadliest violence since the 1980s, with a police officer among several killed by gunfire. On roads, the torched detritus amassed over four days of unrest was scattered amid fist-size hunks of rock and cement that appeared to have been flung during riots. Armored vehicles roved the city’s palm-lined boulevards, usually