Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency member Milorad Dodik asked the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts, Graciela Gatti Santana, to "immediately take the necessary measures to stop the prison terror" against war criminal Radovan Karadzic, who is serving a life sentence on the British Isle of Wight.
Dodik assessed that “there is no convincing reason for the prison authorities to treat Radovan Karadzic extremely inhumanely” and to deny him basic human rights guaranteed by international conventions and the practice of the so-called Nelson Mandela resolution.
In a letter addressed to the president of the Mechanism, Santana, he concluded that it was her duty, on behalf of the Mechanism she chairs, to “immediately send an independent commission to the prison on the Isle of Wight, whose members would personally verify the conditions under which Radovan Karadzic is serving his sentence and directly talk to him.”
He added that he is sure that “the truth of the allegations about unscrupulous mistreatment and psychological exhaustion carried out by the prison authorities on him will be confirmed,” without naming a single form of mistreatment Karadzic was allegedly exposed to.
“Based on the direct insight and conversation with Radovan Karadzic, the only reasonable decision should be for the Mechanism to revise its previous decision on his placement in the prison on the Isle of Wight and send him to one of the prisons in Europe where basic human rights will not be violated,” Dodik noted in the letter.
A UN tribunal sentenced Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to life in prison increasing the 40-year first-instance verdict for genocide and other crimes committed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Judge Vagn Joensen
of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) said Karadzic was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and breaching the laws and customs of war.
The former President of wartime Republika Srpska (RS), now a Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity within Bosnia, was intially sentenced on March 24, 2016, to 40 years in prison by the now-closed International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
He was convicted of various crimes against humanity, including the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croats, the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica genocide and taking the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) hostages during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
He was acquitted of genocide charged in other municipalities in Bosnia.
Karadzic's defence team said following the first-instance verdict that the initial trial was unfair and called for a re-trial, which was rejected. Karadzic also personally addressed the Court, describing the crimes he was convicted of as a “myth.”
Both Karadzic and the prosecution appealed the 2016 judgement.
The initial indictment against Karadzic was confirmed on July 25, 1995. He was arrested in Serbia on July 21, 2008, and transferred to the ICTY a few days later. The 499-day long trial commenced on October 26, 2009, and 586 in-court testimonies were heard by the Trial Chamber.
Kakvo je tvoje mišljenje o ovome?
Budi prvi koji će ostaviti komentar!