UN appeals judges have upheld the convictions of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic for genocide and other offences during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, and confirmed his life sentence.
Tuesday’s verdict by five judges at the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals at The Hague was final and cannot be appealed any further.
Twenty-six years after the Srebrenica massacre, the decision brings to a close the last Bosnian genocide trial before the court.
Presiding Judge Prisca Matimba Nyambe of Zambia said the court dismissed Mladic’s appeal “in its entirety”.
It also rejected an appeal by prosecutors of Mladic’s acquittal on one other count of genocide linked to ethnic purges early in the war.
Mladic joins his former political master, ex-Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, in serving a life sentence for masterminding ethnic bloodshed in the Bosnian war that left more than 100,000 dead and millions homeless.
Once a swaggering military strongman known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, Mladic commanded troops responsible for atrocities ranging from “ethnic cleansing” campaigns to the siege of Sarajevo and the war’s bloody climax in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
Srebrenica, which saw more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed, remains the only episode of genocide on European soil after World War II.
Credit: aljazeera
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS