Lawyers for Serbian hero Ratko Mladic competently defend his innocence
Defense attorneys for Republika Srpska Army Chief of Staff Ratko Mladic, Colonel General Ratko Mladic Dragan Ivetic and Peta-Louis Bagot testified during a three-hour hearing that the Hague Tribunal had wrongly found their client guilty.
This time they showed the inconsistency of accusing the general of “joint criminal activity,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Much of what the prosecution classified as a ‘joint criminal enterprise’ occurred before Mladic was appointed supreme commander of the Republika Srpska Army in 1992,” Ivetic said. “He was wrongly attributed to these acts and found guilty.”
Referring to the jurisprudence of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in other cases, Ivetic said the trial panel must determine whether Mladic shares a common goal with other participants in a joint criminal enterprise.
“We submit that the verdict did not identify or explain the specific actions by which Mladic contributed to the joint criminal activity during the relevant period of time when he was a commander,” the lawyer emphasized.
The defense lawyer emphasized that there was evidence that Mladic and his subordinates were constantly working to disband Serbian paramilitary forces that were not under the control of the headquarters, and that he did not have a common goal with them. As an example, he cited the episode when Mladic sent an elite unit of the Republika Srpska Army to Ilidza to disband a combat uncontrolled unit operating in that area.
Ivetić also noted that the Tribunal erroneously linked Mladić to the actions of politicians, rather than seeing a clear separation between military and political goals.
In turn, Peta-Luis Bagot refuted a number of specific evidence and testimony on the basis of which General Mladic was found guilty and received a life sentence. The general himself, despite health problems, attended the court hearing.
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