Ratko Mladic war crimes trial suspended indefinitely after ‘substantial’errors by prosecutors

The “substantial” errors by the prosecution team involve between 2
million to 8 million pages of case files and witness statements that have
not been disclosed to Mladic’s defence.

The pages, which together amount to 40,000 documents, relate to the first 24
witnesses that the prosecution had hoped to call between 29 May and July,
when the court goes into recess.

The deadline for disclosing the files was last November. However, it emerged
yesterday that despite “multiple” complaints the UN prosecutors
had failed to hand over the documents.

An internal prosecution document filed on Tuesday, a day before the Mladic
trial began, admitted that “full disclosure has not yet been made”
and “issues may impact on trial fairness”.

Alphons Orie, the presiding UN judge, described the lapse as an “unpleasant
surprise”. Court officials told The Daily Telegraph that the delays
would last “for months”.

Branko Lukic, Mladic’s defence lawyer, described the blunder as “unprecedented
in the history of the tribunal” and said that it “threatens to be
a significant blight to the integrity of these proceedings”.

Before the trial was adjourned “sine die”, or indefinitely, UN
prosecutors had set out how Mladic had organised the round-up, murder and
burial of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.

After unleashing “utter brutality” and “setting in motion”
the first genocide on Europe’s soil since the Nazi Holocaust, the Bosnian
Serb general partied at a wedding on the same day thousands of people were
executed.

Peter McCloskey, the UN prosecutor, said that only “effective
professional army” such as Mladic’s Bosnian Serb force, the Vojska
Republike Srpske (VRS,) was capable of carrying out the Srebrenica massacre.

“This was not an army out of control or controlled by someone else. Only
an army strictly controlled at the top could have managed to murder over
7,000 people in four days,” he said.

“The VRS was a professional army which carried out orders with incredible
discipline, organisation and military efficiency. Capturing, transporting,
murdering and burying over 7,000 men and boys, at first in total secrecy
from the outside world, was a truly amazing feat of utter brutality.”

Radio intercepts, Mladic’s own diaries and signed battle-plans will be
produced in evidence to show he was responsible for organising brutal
instructions from Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president.

Karadzic’s infamous “directive seven” instructed Mladic to “create
an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival
or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica”.

On 14 July 1995, Mladic took time out of his military campaign in Srebrenica
the day after mass executions began at the nearby Kravica village.

Travelling to Belgrade, he held talks with Nato and UN commanders, including
the British General Rupert Smith, on 15 July an encounter noted in his own
diary.

“Mladic in his own hand recorded that General Rupert Smith informed him
of rumours of atrocities, massacres and rape being committed in Srebrenica,”
said the UN prosecutor.

“What did Mladic do? He went to a wedding the next morning.”

The UN court was shown a picture of Mladic partying, on a day when at least
1,500 men were slaughtered in the woods and roads around Srebrenica,
including the notorious “killing fields” on Branjevo Farm.

“While Mladic is here shown smiling… people are being murdered,”
said the prosecutor.

The mothers of Srebrenica victims wept as they listened.

“My husband was 45 years old. He was taken away and killed only because
he had a different name and different religion,” said Zumra
Sahomerovic. “There is no punishment good enough for him.”

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