Judge Rejects Bid to Delay Verdict for Ratko Mladic in Bosnian Genocide
Asked what Russian or Serbian doctors could do for Mr. Mladic
that Dutch doctors could not, Mr. Ivetic said suspicions grew when the defense could not obtain Mr. Mladic’s full records, test results or medical imagery to evaluate his condition.
12, 2017
PARIS — A verdict in one of the most closely watched war crimes cases in recent history — the genocide trial of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general held responsible for the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men
and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 — is expected this month, after a judge rejected defense lawyers’ pleas to postpone the judgment.
Dan Ivetic, an American lawyer who is the co-counsel on the Mladic team, said his client’s condition — already weakened
by two strokes by the time he was arrested in 2011 — has worsened since his trial ended last December.
Lawyers have demanded that Serbian doctors review Mr. Mladic’s condition, insisting
that court-appointed physicians have been playing down their client’s dire state and neglected to carry out important tests for heart disease and brain damage.
This year, the court had also turned down Mr. Mladic request to be treated in Russia or Serbia,
because it said there was a risk he would not return to The Hague.
But Mr. Mladic has not resisted treatment and even thanked his caretakers a few years ago for saving his life after arriving in The Hague in 2011, as he put it, "with one foot in the grave." Yet tension between Mr. Mladic’s caretakers
and his lawyers have grown this year after he was rushed to a hospital for an undisclosed crisis in March.
