prijava
THE HAGUE/SARAJEVO, June 19 (FENA) - The UN court rejected a request from former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić’s defense to have three judges removed from his appeal against conviction because of their rulings in Srebrenica genocide trials.
The Mechanism for International Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday rejected the request for the removal of the judges who Mladić’s defense claims are biased against the former Bosnian Serb military chief, saying it should have been filed to the court’s president, not its appeals chamber.
“The Appellate Chamber does not have the capacity to deal with this motion,” said Theodor Meron, president of the Mechanism for International Tribunals, BIRN reports.
Defense attorneys Branko Lukić and Dragan Ivetić requested that Meron, Carmel Agius and Liu Daqun be exempted from Mladić’s appeal against conviction because of their “partiality”.
In separate motions, Mladić’s lawyers cited parts of verdicts which Meron, Agius and Daqun wrote in which, they claimed, the judges made “unacceptable conclusions concerning Mladić”.
They said that Meron chaired the chambers that convicted Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstić and military commander Zdravko Tolimir for genocide in Srebrenica, arguing that the verdicts said that Mladić “intended to kill Bosnian Muslims” and that he was aware of the illegal activities committed by his subordinates.
Mladić’s lawyers also said that Agius was a member of the chamber that convicted Bosnian Serb military officers Vujadin Popović, Ljubiša Beara, Drago Nikolić, Radivoje Miletić, Vinko Pandurević, Ljubomir Borovčanin and Milan Gvero, while Daqun participated in the verdict in the case against Vidoje Blagojević, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Bratunac Brigade, and Dragan Jokić of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade.
The UN court sentenced Mladić to life imprisonment in November last year after finding him guilty of genocide in Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorizing the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
Mladić was acquitted of committing genocide in six other Bosnian municipalities.
In a new motion, Mladić’s defense lawyers meanwhile repeated their request to lift immunity from criminal prosecution for managers of the medical section of the UN Detention Unit, where the former Bosnian Serb military chief is being held, in order to be able to bring an action against them.
Mladić’s lawyers claim that he is not receiving adequate healthcare at the Detention Unit in Scheveningen in the Netherlands.
Mladić has been held in detention since May 2011, when he was arrested in Serbia.
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals on Wednesday scheduled a status conference for July 10 as part of the appeals procedure in the Mladić case.
Meron said that Mladić and his lawyers will have the opportunity to “present their stance concerning the appellate procedure, as well as defendant’s mental and health state” at the status conference.
(FENA) S. R.
