The UN Appeals Judges have confirmed the convictions of the former SERBIO military chief of Bosnia, Ratko Mladic for genocide and other crimes during the 1992-95 War of Bosnia, and confirmed his sentence of life.
Tuesday’s verdict by five judges in the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts in The Hague was final and can not appeal more.
Twenty-six years after the massacre of Srebrenica, the decision brings to close the last judgment of Bosnian genocide before the Court.
The judge who presides over Prisca Matimba Nyambe de Zambia said that the court dismissed Mladic’s appeal “in its entirety”.
He also rejected an Appeal of the Assistants of Mladic for another charge of the genocide linked to ethnic purities at the beginning of the war.
Mladic joins his former Political Master, former Serbian president of Bosnia, Radovan Karadzic, serving a sentence of life for the inheritance, the shedding of ethnic blood in the Bosnian War that left more than 100,000 dead and millions without home.
Once a strong strong man, known as the “butcher of Bosnia,” Mladic commanded the troops responsible for the atrocities ranging from “ethnic cleaning” campaigns to the siege of Sarajevo and the Bloodillo of War in the massacre of Srebrenica of 1995.
Srebrenica, who saw more than 8,000 murdered muslim men and children, remains the only episode of genocide on European soil after the Second World War.
For the genocide of Srebrenica, the judges determined that Mladic had an absolutely fundamental role when he controlled the military and police units involved in the hallmark and the massacre.
“The acts of the defendant were so instrumental for the commission of the crimes that without them, the crimes would not have committed as they were,” the court found.
MLADIC, now a fragile elder whose ill health delayed Tuesday’s final judgment, was sentenced in 2017 on charges of genocide, crimes for crimes of humanity and war and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The lawyers of him had appealed the conviction of him, arguing that the Old General could not be responsible for the possible offenses committed by the subordinates of him.
They asked for an absolution or a new trial.
The widows and mothers of the victims were off the court, as the sentence was made.
He comes after 25 years of trials in the now enclosed International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (TPI), who condemned 90 people.
The human rights head of the UN, Michelle Bachelet, acclaimed the ruling.
Jasmin Mujanovic, a political scientist who specializes in Southeast European Affairs, welcomed most developments, but criticized the judges for rejecting the Appeal of Prosecutors in the other genocide recount.