UN court denies ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Ratko Mladic early release from prison
Mladic, jailed for life in 2017 over genocide and war crimes, filed a request to be freed on June 3 saying he only had a few months to live
A UN court on Tuesday denied a request for early release from Ratko Mladic, a military leader during the 1990s Yugoslav wars known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”.
Mladic, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 over genocide and war crimes, filed a request to be freed on June 3 saying he only had a few months to live.
But a judge at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, the court tasked with handling remaining cases from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said his condition did not meet the threshold of an “acute terminal illness” required for release.
“I acknowledge that Mladic’s current condition, which requires dependency on others for activities of daily living, is precarious,” judge Graciela Gatti Santana said in a 12-page decision issued in The Hague.
“The information before me demonstrates that the compelling humanitarian circumstances invoked by Mladic as a basis for his release are not substantiated.”
Mladic, now in his 80s, was sentenced by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his role in the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.