prijava
THE HAGUE/SARAJEVO, February 18 (FENA) - Former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladić, who is appealing against his first-instance conviction for genocide and other crimes, has again complained to the UN court in The Hague that his health is deteriorating.
“My health continues to fail. I am not a doctor, so I do not know what is causing that,” Ratko Mladić told a status conference at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Monday, BIRN reports.
The 75-year-old former Bosnian Serb Army commander said however that medical documents provided by staff at the UN Detention Unit staff reiterated in that his condition was stable and unchanged.
Mladić has had several serious health problems while in detention and has suffered two strokes and one heart attack.
He has repeatedly complained about the medical treatment he has received in detention.
In May last year, his request for contempt of court proceedings against healthcare officers at the UN Detention Unit was rejected. Mladić’s defense claimed that they were responsible for the deterioration of the defendant’s health.
Prior to that, the former Bosnian Serb military chief’s lawyers have asked for the pronouncement of his verdict to be postponed, for doctors to punished and for Mladić to be released for treatment, insisting that he has not received adequate care at the Detention Unit and that he needed hospitalization.
In November 2017, the UN court sentenced Mladić to life imprisonment, finding him guilty of genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorizing the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
Mladić was acquitted of genocide charges in six other Bosnian municipalities.
Both the defense and the prosecution are appealing.
Mladić has been held in detention since May 2011, when he was arrested in Serbia and sent to The Hague.
(FENA) S. R.
