Serbia's top leadership, as well as main opposition parties, remained silent on Tuesday, hours after Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic was sentenced to life by The Hague Court, with only Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin saying, the sentence was the verdict to justice, not the general.

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said she could not comment on the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) ruling to uphold the first instance verdict, confirming Mladic was responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity forces under his control committed against Bosniaks and Croats in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

She added President Aleksandar Vucic would speak about it later on Tuesday during a UN Security Council session, and called on people in Serbia to carefully listen to him.

The reactions by political parties are divided – from welcoming the verdict by the Social-Democratic Party of Serbia, saying only individuals, not entire nations could commit genocide, to the National-Democratic Coalition which said it was not surprised by the ruling “because that international court has long lost its legitimacy by acquitting the Muslim and Croatian terrorists and war criminals.”

Lawyers in Serbia was more ready to comment on the MICT verdict.

Branislav Tapuskovic, an attorney, told N1 the most interesting thing in the ruling was the rejection of the prosecutors’ appeal demanding Mladic’s responsibility for genocide in six more municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, besides the one, confirmed in Srebrenica.

“The BH interest was that genocide was proven on its entire territory,” Tapuskovic said.

If that happened, he added, the existence of the BH Serb entity Republika Srpska would have been challenged.

Mladic’s lawyer Branko Lukic, who did not participate in the MICT Appeal Chamber session, told N1 he did not expect such a verdict and thought all the judges would read the defence reasons.

“Unfortunately, there was no will to look into the first instance ruling through evidence presented during the appeal procedure,” Lukic said, adding the defence team had new evidence, including that out of over 8,000 people killed, some 5,000 had died in combat which was “indisputably established.”