UN tribunal failed to reconcile Bosnia, says Mladic’s lawyer
SARAJEVO: The UN tribunal set up to try Balkan war crimes suspects is a “political” institution that has failed to reconcile Bosnia, a lawyer for Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime military chief, said.
The court should have “led to reconciliation” between ethnic groups but “all of us living in Bosnia know that it did not succeed,” lawyer Miodrag Stevanovic told AFP.
As for “the choice of who should be indicted by the prosecution, I have no difficulty in saying that it was political,” said Stevanovic.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which closes at the end of the year, has made 83 convictions linked to the bitter 1990s conflicts since it was established at The Hague in 1993.
On Wednesday, ICTY judges will deliver their verdict on Mladic, who faces 11 charges including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity – arising from Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.
The 74-year-old became internationally known as the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his role in the civil war, in which 100,000 people were killed and another 2.2 million displaced.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said he “fundamentally” disagreed with Stevanovic’s allegations, stressing that his office had “no political agenda”.
“What is much more the case is that nationalist politicians in the region are trying to use... the decisions by the ICTY to push their own nationalistic agenda,” he said. — AFP