Judge halts genocide trial of Ratko Mladic after prosecution errors

The genocide trial of alleged war criminal Ratko Mladic was halted today after the presiding judge declared that there were “significant disclosure errors” by prosecutors

Alphons Orie said he was delaying the case as prosecutors were obliged to share all their evidence with Mladic’s defence team. He added that judges were still analysing the “scope and full impact” of the error, which the prosecution has admitted. Mladic’s lawyer has asked for a six-month delay in resuming the trial.

Mr Orie said he aimed to establish a new starting date “as soon as possible.” Earlier prosecutors had started to outline the build-up to the bloody climax of the Bosnian war.

On the second day of the case, the focus was to be on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War. The court was due to hear of

70-year-old former general Mladic’s involvement in the murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in a UN-protected enclave, before they were buried in mass graves.

Prosecuting counsel Peter McCloskey said it was not the massacre itself that was in dispute, but individual criminal responsibility.

Mladic today displayed the swagger for which he was known during the war as he applauded in court while watching a video of himself screaming at a Dutch UN peacekeeper in the hours leading up to the killings. The UN war crimes tribunal showed footage of him making Colonel Thom Karremans flinch as he demanded: “Did you order your soldiers to shoot my soldiers?”

Mladic, dubbed the “butcher of Bosnia”, was arguing with the commander over why he had authorised Nato planes to bomb advancing Serb forces.

The case against Mladic is that the Serb Army was not “out of control,” but rather was led by Mladic.

Mr McCloskey said: “We have radio intercepts of VRS (Bosnian Serb) soldiers and officers discussing murders. We have video of two of the actual executions themselves. So let me be perfectly clear, the crime will not be the main focus of this prosecution. This case will be primarily about one issue: the individual criminal responsibility of Ratko Mladic.” Mr McCloskey added that Srebrenica “was a Bosnian genocide that we must never forget”. Mladic faces 11 charges, including genocide, in connection with the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He has refused to enter pleas, calling the claims “monstrous,” but denies wrongdoing.