DARKO MLADIĆ: “My personal view and the view of the family is that General Mladić was murdered at the Hague Tribunal”!

The son of General Ratko Mladić, Darko Mladić, said today that the family believes his father was killed at the Hague Tribunal through “negligent treatment and the deliberate administration of excessively strong opiates,” while a member of the defense medical team, Dr. Ognjen Gudelj, stated that despite numerous serious illnesses, the general’s blood pressure and blood sugar levels were not regularly measured, nor were the necessary laboratory tests performed.

At a press conference held by General Mladić’s family at the Press Center of the Association of Journalists of Serbia in Belgrade, details of the commemoration and funeral of the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska were also announced.

The conference was attended by Darko Mladić, General Mladić’s defense attorney Dragan Ivetić, Dr. Ognjen Gudelj, and Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujić.

Commemoration at the Army House, funeral at Topčider Cemetery

At the beginning of his address, Darko Mladić thanked members of the media for attending in large numbers and announced that the main topics of the conference would be the organization of the funeral and the circumstances under which his father died at the Hague Tribunal.

“Tomorrow at 12 noon, a commemoration will be held at the Army House of Serbia. Given that the hall is small and can accommodate up to 300 people, I ask for your understanding. You can also get all information about the participants and organization from the Association of Generals and Admirals, which is helping us,” Mladić said.

The funeral of General Ratko Mladić will be held on Monday, September 7, at Topčider Cemetery.

“From seven o’clock in the morning, the coffin containing his body will be placed in the Church of St. Luke in Košutnjak, on Kneza Višeslava Street. Everyone who wishes to express their condolences to the family and pay their respects to the general will be able to do so from seven until noon,” Darko Mladić said.

After that, he explained, the funeral procession will head toward Topčider Cemetery, where the funeral is expected to begin between 1:30 and 2 p.m., depending on the time needed for the procession to reach the cemetery.

Darko Mladić called on the general’s friends, admirers, and relatives to come in as large a number as possible and respectfully accompany him to the place where he will rest beside his late daughter.

“I call on all friends, admirers, and relatives of General Mladić to come in as large a number as possible and to respectfully accompany my father to his home, where he will rest beside my late sister,” he said.

Due to the expected large number of people, he asked citizens, if possible, to use public transportation in order to avoid traffic congestion and enable everyone who wishes to attend the funeral to arrive on time.

“We want a peaceful and dignified funeral”

Mladić emphasized that the family wants the funeral to proceed peacefully, without clashes, political arguments, or provocations.

“I would like the funeral to pass peacefully and with dignity and not become an occasion for clashes and political bickering. I call on everyone to refrain from any provocations and attempts to prevent this event, so that the mourners can respectfully and according to our customs bury my father, the commander of the Army of Republika Srpska,” Darko Mladić said.

Speaking afterward about the circumstances of his father’s death, he stated the family’s position that General Mladić died as a result of inadequate and negligent treatment at the Hague Tribunal’s detention hospital.

“For me, the most agonizing period was the last two months, when my father was being killed before my eyes. My personal view and the view of the family is that General Mladić was murdered at the Hague Tribunal through negligent treatment and the deliberate administration of excessively strong opiates, which ultimately led to his death,” Mladić said.

He stated that Dr. Ognjen Gudelj had been traveling to Scheveningen for years and had insight into the general’s treatment, but only to the extent that he was permitted.

“Dr. Gudelj had been going there for years and had insight, as much as he was allowed, into the way my father was being treated, or rather, into the way he was not being treated,” Mladić said.

“Care and treatment are not the same thing”

Darko Mladić emphasized that the conditions in which his father stayed were technically good, but that good care cannot be equated with appropriate medical treatment.

“My father received good care at the Hague Tribunal. But care and treatment are not the same thing. You can put a person in a seven-star hotel, give him the best food and the best care, but if you treat him incorrectly, you cannot save him,” he stated.

According to him, the Tribunal emphasized the conditions in the detention hospital and the fact that the general had spent the last two years in its new wing, but this, the family claims, diverted attention from the essential question — the manner in which he was treated.

“Although the technical conditions for care were good, he essentially did not receive adequate treatment and ultimately died as a consequence of that negligent treatment,” Darko Mladić said.

He thanked the Government of Serbia and Justice Minister Nenad Vujić for the assistance they had provided to the family and defense, particularly during the last two and a half years, when, as he stated, the fundamental fight for his father’s life began.

“When he became bedridden, also due to a mistake by doctors at the Tribunal, he practically never got back up. The Government of Serbia constantly accommodated all our requests, primarily when it came to the guarantees that were necessary for us to be able to submit requests and seek my father’s release for medical treatment,” Mladić said.

He called attorney Dragan Ivetić the most loyal defender of General Mladić, who, together with the family, remained by his side until the very end.

“We literally fought for my father’s life until the last second,” Darko Mladić emphasized.

He revealed that he received the news of his father’s death precisely when the family and defense had completed preparations for a new submission to Judge Gati Santana.

“I received the call from the Tribunal that my father had died at the moment when we had finally put together everything necessary for the submission to Judge Gati Santana. This was supposed to be our explanation and response to the experts’ opinions that she had requested in the proceedings for reconsideration of the decision,” he said.

As he added, those engaged included experts and doctors from the United Nations, who, according to the family’s assessment, were essentially given the task of “evaluating themselves.”

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Gudelj: The general was killed through the doctors’ inaction

A member of the defense medical team, Dr. Ognjen Gudelj, said that, as a doctor who had taken the Hippocratic Oath, it was extremely difficult for him to state the conclusion he had reached based on years of insight into General Mladić’s health.

“All my life, I have had to tell patients and their families the truth, whatever that truth might be. After so many years of treating General Mladić, with great regret I have to state something I thought I would never say about anyone in my life. The truth is what Darko Mladić said — General Mladić was murdered at the Hague Tribunal. He was killed through the inaction of the doctors and medical staff at the detention hospital in Scheveningen,” Gudelj claims.

He stated that although the general was a seriously ill cardiac patient, his blood pressure was not measured daily, nor were laboratory tests regularly performed, despite the fact that he was receiving medications whose metabolites are excreted through the kidneys.

“When you do not measure someone’s blood pressure every day, even though he is a cardiac patient, when you do not perform laboratory tests at least every few days, even though he is receiving toxic medications that are excreted through the kidneys, while at the same time he has chronic renal insufficiency — that is de facto murder. If you do not do this for a month, then it is a deliberate and premeditated murder. If you do not give him medication for diabetes when he is diabetic, that is murder,” Gudelj said.

He also recounted parts of conversations he had with doctors at the detention hospital during his visits.

“I asked: ‘People, what are you doing, where are his blood pressure readings from the last month?’ They replied: ‘We decided not to measure his blood pressure.’ For me, as a cardiologist, doctor, and human being, that was a tremendous shock,” Gudelj said.

When he requested the results of laboratory tests so that he could see the basis on which medications were being prescribed or discontinued for the general, he claims he was told that the doctors had decided not to perform the tests because they wanted to “spare the patient pain.”

“It is difficult to listen to that. They are talking about the pain of a needle prick in a man lying in bed. I asked on what basis they were giving him medication and how they were assessing his diabetes, and the answer was: ‘We decided to discontinue his diabetes medication.’ At that moment, you realize that things have gone too far, that there is no more time, and that the family has not been informed about any of this,” Gudelj stated.

Controversial use of fentanyl

Dr. Gudelj made particularly serious allegations regarding the use of fentanyl. As he said, the attorneys and family were informed that the general was receiving fentanyl patches, but they were not told that the opioid was also being administered sublingually.

“I received a temperature chart showing that he had already been receiving fentanyl for a month. The attorneys and family had been informed that he was receiving fentanyl patches, but it was concealed that he was being treated all that time with sublingual doses of fentanyl as well,” Gudelj said.

He stated that fentanyl is a powerful narcotic, some of whose metabolites are excreted through the kidneys, which is why, in his assessment, its use required special caution and continuous monitoring of kidney function.

“At that moment, the general already had a catheter. His kidneys had stopped working, and it was only a matter of days before his life would end. Through inaction,” Gudelj said.

The doctor stated that he had taken medical documentation out of the Hague Tribunal because he intended to file a lawsuit, but later learned from an attorney that it was not possible to sue the Tribunal’s medical service because of the immunity it enjoys.

According to him, a doctor from the detention hospital told him during their final meeting: “Colleague, you will agree that we disagree.”

“I replied that it was not a problem that she and I disagreed, but that all European, American, Japanese, and worldwide treatment recommendations disagreed with their method of treatment. I said that this would cost someone very dearly,” Gudelj stated.

At the end, he also claimed that he could not even obtain a device at the detention hospital with which he could measure General Mladić’s blood pressure.

“After many years during which we had a correct cooperation, I asked to be given a device for measuring General Mladić’s blood pressure. For the first time, I was told that they were sorry, but that they did not have a blood pressure monitor,” Dr. Ognjen Gudelj concluded.