On TV at 1500GMT: Is it worth prosecuting an 'old broken man' like Mladic?
| 11:30 UK time, Friday, 27 May 2011
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UPDATE:Ìý Ex-Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic has been declared fit to be extradited from Serbia to face trial in The Hague.Ìý Gen Mladic's legal team say he is in poor health and that they will appeal on Monday. They have requested that he be admitted to hospital over concerns about his health.
Do you think Mr. Mladic's health should be taken into consideration in relation to this trial? We hope you'll get in touch.
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ORIGINAL POST:
Our first glimpse of Ratko Mladic following his arrest were in Belgrade, apparently stooping and somewhat withered.
According to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s John Simpson - who met him while covering the Bosnian war - he looked like an .
Doctors are now assessing his physical and psychological condition as part of the extradition proceedings.
This is some of what his lawyer, Milos Saljic, says ...
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The investigative judge tried to interrogate Ratko Mladic but he failed because he (Mladic) is in a difficult psychological and physical condition. It is difficult to establish any kind of communication with him.
If he's unable to communicate, and therefore to testify, is it possible to get any sort of satisfactory justice from proceedings against Ratko Mladic?
Or do you agree with smiling_suze, who tweets
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Why on earth should it make any difference how old / ill Mladic is?! Sometimes human rights just goes too far! This man has to pay regardless of health!
Perhaps you think his physical state is symbolic of the fact that the authorities .
Proceedings at the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague were never completed against former Serb President Slobodan Milosevic - more than 4 years after his arrest.
Richard Dicker from Human Rights Watch assesses it like this ...
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"From any prosecutor's perspective, the passage of time is not a good thing. Witnesses die. Witnesses disappear. Memories fade. And in those ways the passage of time makes the prosecutor's burden heavier ... But in this instance, the office of the prosecutor at the Yugoslav tribunal undoubtedly made a tenacious effort to nail down everything that it felt it would need for an eventual trial."
Is it too late for justice in the case of Ratko Mladic?
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