Lawyers for Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic told a UN court he was at risk of a "miscarriage of justice" because he was not mentally fit to take part in an appeal hearing against his genocide conviction.
A frail-looking Mladic appeared in court wearing a mask because of coronavirus regulations, which he later removed. "I am unable to meaningfully gain instruction from Mr Mladic, or be assured that he is able to meaningfully follow proceedings." This included genocide committed by his forces in the small eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, Europe's worst bloodshed since World War II, where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered.
Mladic will himself be allowed to speak for ten minutes tomorrow. He had to be dragged out of the court in 2017 after an outburst in which he accused the judges of lying. Mladic was the military face of a trio led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.