UN war crimes tribunal trims back indictment to speed up Mladic trial

The United Nations tribunal set up in the wake of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s today reduced the indictment against former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, who faces genocide charges, to ensure a fair and expeditious trial.

The trial chamber at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) adopted the prosecution’s proposal to limit its presentation of evidence to a selection of 106 crimes, instead of 196 initially scheduled crimes in Mr. Mladic’s indictment.

It also adopted the prosecution proposal to limit the number of municipalities covered by the indictment to 15 instead of 23, according to a news release issued by the tribunal, which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands.

“In the interests of a fair and expeditious trial, the chamber fixes the number of crime sites or incidents of the charges in respect of which evidence may be presented by the prosecution in accordance with the prosecution submission,” ruled the trial chamber.

The prosecution is to file an amended indictment and amended lists of victims within two weeks.

Mr. Mladic, the war-time leader of the Bosnian Serb forces, was arrested in Serbia on 26 May, after evading capture for 16 years.

He faces numerous charges, including genocide, extermination, murder and inflicting terror on civilians, particularly in connection with the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the supposed “safe haven” of Srebrenica in July 1995.