Former commander faces charges of crimes against humanity, including massacre of 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica
The former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic will be arraigned on 11 charges including genocide and crimes against humanity on Friday morning, judges at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have announced.
The former commander of the Bosnian Serb army faces accusations that forces under his command massacred over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995.
The indictment also alleges his troops tortured, mistreated and physically, psychologically and sexually abused civilians confined in 58 detention facilities in 22 municipalities. Mladic is also facing charges for the shelling and sniping of Sarajevo, during which thousands of civilians were killed and wounded.
The announcement of his arraignment came after Mladic spent his first night in the United Nations detention unit in a seaside suburb of the Dutch capital. He was flown from Serbia on Tuesday afternoon and was taken under police escort into a isolation cell at dusk where he underwent a medical examination.
Mladic, 69, will be asked to enter pleas on all charges relating to his alleged masterminding of atrocities throughout the 1992 – 1995 Bosnian war.
The tribunal has appointed Judge Bakone Justice Moloto of South Africa, Judge Christoph Flügge from Germany and Judge Alphons Orie from the Netherlands to preside over the trial.
If Mladic complies with the schedule, his arraignment on Friday could bring him into the same court building as his superior during the Bosnian war, Radovan Karadzic. The former Bosnian Serb president is currently on trial for similar charges.
On Wednesday, Karadzic was in court dressed in a smart black suit and crisp white shirt and followed his case closely on two computer monitors. He looked relaxed, yawned and itched his nose.
His trial has already been under way for 18 months and observers at the court point out they are not even halfway through the evidence.
Before he left Serbia, Mladic's lawyer, Milos Saljic, insisted he was not well enough physically or mentally to stand trial. He tried to slow the proceedings by sending his appeal by post at the last possible moment on Monday, but Serbia's war crimes court rejected it almost as soon as it arrived on Tuesday.