Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Ratko Mladic's lawyer, Milos Salic, talked to reporters after seeing his client on Monday.
Published: May 30, 2011
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Ratko Mladic's wife, Bosiljka, right, and son, Darko, center, left the Special Court building where the former Serbian military commander is being held in Belgrade, Serbia, on Monday.
The appeal argues that Mr. Mladic is physically and mentally unfit for trial. Serbian officials estimate that if a three-judge panel in Belgrade denies the appeal, Mr. Mladic could be transferred in two to four days, depending on security arrangements. Since his capture last week, after nearly 16 years on the run, Mr. Mladic has asked Serbian political figures with medical expertise to visit him, among them the minister of health, a pathologist, and the speaker of Parliament, a neurosurgeon.
“I believe the trial will not go ahead, because I do not believe Mladic will see the start of that process in front of the Hague Tribunal,” said Mr. Mladic’s lawyer, Milos Saljic. He spoke to reporters in front of the Special Court in Belgrade, where Mr. Mladic is imprisoned with guards and doctors watching over him.
Bruno Vekaric, the deputy war crimes prosecutor in Serbia, has characterized the appeal as a tactic because local doctors have concluded that Mr. Mladic is well enough to be transferred for trial.
The health of prisoners accused of war crimes has been a factor in other legal proceedings. After Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian and Yugoslavian president, died in custody in the Hague in 2006, doctors concluded that he had intentionally taken drugs that undermined medications for his heart ailments, a bid to slow the pace of his trial on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide stemming from the several Balkan wars in the 1990s.
Also on Monday, Mr. Mladic was reunited in a teary visit with his grandchildren, 10 and 5, according to Mr. Saljic. He continued to press for the right to visit the grave of his daughter in Belgrade, and added a request to visit his mother’s countryside grave in the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia. According to the Mladic family’s priest, Vojislav Carkic, Mr. Mladic attended his brother’s funeral there in 2001, while a fugitive.
