UN court denies ‘Butcher of Bosnia' Ratko Mladic early release from prison
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Mladic, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 over genocide and war crimes, filed a request to be freed on June 3 saying he only had a few months to live.
But a judge at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, the court tasked with handling remaining cases from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said his condition did not meet the threshold of an 'acute terminal illness' required for release.
'I acknowledge that Mladic's current condition, which requires dependency on others for activities of daily living, is precarious,' judge Graciela Gatti Santana said in a 12-page decision issued in The Hague.
'Nonetheless,
Mladic continues to receive very comprehensive and compassionate care, as amply supported by medical reports.
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'The information before me demonstrates that the compelling humanitarian circumstances invoked by Mladic as a basis for his release are not substantiated.'
Mladic, now in his 80s, was sentenced by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his role in the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
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