Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander accused of war crimes and arrested after 16 years on the run, appeared in a Belgrade court hearing last night which was cut short after his lawyer claimed he could not communicate.
According to Serbian television station B92 judge Milan Dilparic suspended the interrogation due to Mladic’s poor physical and mental health.
69 year old Mladic, who is accused of the worst genocide in Europe since World War II, faces extradition to The Hague to answer charges relating to conflicts during the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.
Mladic allegedly led the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the UN-protected Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, an atrocity that came to symbolize the brutality of the Balkans conflict.
He was instrumental in bringing to fruition then Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s plans to ethnically cleanse Bosnia-Herzegovina of Bosnian Muslims.
Karadzic himself was captured in Belgrade in July 2008 and is currently on trial at The Hague.
Mladic was captured in a pre-dawn raid on Thursday by intelligence agents in the village of Lazarevo, in northern Serbia.
Questioning is expected to resume on Friday after Mladic has undergone medical assessment.
