THE PRESIDING judge at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia will enter a plea of not guilty on behalf of Gen Ratko Mladic if he fails to respond to charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes when he appears before the court for a second time this morning.
The 69-year-old former Bosnian Serb commander, arrested in May, chose not to plead to the 11 “obnoxious” charges read to him by Judge Alphons Orie of the Netherlands when he first appeared before the UN-backed international court at the start of June.
The three-judge trial chamber then gave Mladic – known at the height of his military power as the “Butcher of Bosnia” – 30 days during which to consider his plea to the charges arising out of the massacre in Srebrenica in July 1995, and the 44-month-long siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1996.
Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb troops backed by the Serb paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions. The siege of Sarajevo – the longest in modern warfare – cost 10,000 lives, 1,500 of them children.
“If he refuses to enter a plea this time, the judge will enter a plea of not guilty on his behalf,” confirmed Nerma Jelacic, a spokesperson for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, at the weekend.
Ms Jelacic also said that since Mladic had been incarcerated in the UN detention unit at Scheveningen Prison on the outskirts of The Hague, he had submitted to the court “a list of preferences” which was “under review”. Those preferences may include his legal representation. For the first hearing, Mladic was represented by Serbian lawyer Aleksander Aleksic, appointed on a temporary basis. He may appear again today, though in the long term it is open to him to conduct his own defence – like former president of the breakaway Serb Republic Dr Radovan Karadzic, who has been on trial since October 2009.
The other issue raised was Mladic’s health. His lawyers have claimed he was treated for cancer two years ago, but tribunal officials say there is no indication his physical condition could delay or hinder a trial.
With Mladic due to make his second appearance, another former president of Republika Srpska, Biljana Plavsic – who served six years for her part in the campaign of persecution in Bosnia Herzegovina and was released in 2009 – has advised Mladic to follow her example and plead guilty. In a rare interview with the Serbian magazine, Nedeljne Informativne Novine, Plavsic (80) said: "Mladic should take over his part of responsibility, acknowledge things for which he is guilty, and clear the Serb people of any accountability."
Asked why she had not intervened at the time of the alleged atrocities, she replied: “I know what kind of person Mladic is. It was not possible to call him and ask: ‘what have you done’?”
Meanwhile, the UN security council has extended the terms of The Hague tribunal’s 17 judges, eight of whom are permanent. It also urged all member states to intensify efforts to arrest the tribunal’s last fugitive, Goran Hadzic.