MINISTER OF JUSTICE VISITED RATKO MLADIĆ IN THE HAGUE: “He was brought to the meeting in bed, he can barely speak!”

The Minister of Justice of the Republic of Serbia, Nenad Vujić, visited General Ratko Mladić and Mićo Stanišić in the prison in The Hague, after which he met with the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Graciela Gatti Santana, from whom he requested the urgent release of Mladić for treatment in Serbia due to his severe health condition.

Nenad Vujić told Tanjug that Ratko Mladić is in a very difficult health condition and is poorly communicative.

“He said to greet the Serbs and the Serbian people and to thank them for the concern that the Republic of Serbia is showing towards him, but later he lost his strength and communicated with great difficulty, answering with ‘yes’ and ‘no’,” stated the Minister of Justice, noting that General Mladić is in the prison hospital, and that he was not even brought to the meeting with him in a wheelchair but in a bed.

The Minister conveyed that he presented the requests of General Mladić’s family and the Republic of Serbia to the President of the Mechanism, along with the guarantees of our state to release him for humanitarian reasons for treatment in Serbia, because, as he emphasized, this is not a question of politics but of life and because it is necessary to enable him adequate treatment in a serious health institution.

He expressed readiness that, in addition to the serious guarantees given, if the Mechanism deems it necessary, Serbia will provide additional guarantees, because, as he pointed out, the priority is the question of General Mladić’s life.

Vujić invoked the “Mandela Rules”

“I repeated to the President of the Mechanism that the further detention of General Mladić represents a violation of international law and international standards established by the ‘Mandela Rules’, where one of the basic rules is that punishment must not be revenge, and that here we can talk about a kind of revenge,” Vujić assessed.

As he stated, according to those rules, every convict has the right to specialist care, and that is the international standard that is required.

He repeated that they requested from the United Nations Mechanism to respect the rules that apply throughout the world and which the UN adopted.

Darko Mladić, the son of Ratko Mladić, stated on Thursday that his father’s condition is worsening day by day, adding that a team of doctors is ready and that a request has been sent to The Hague to determine as soon as possible a date when they could examine him.

Mladić, according to his son, suffered a minor stroke on April 10, but his condition has worsened.