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Mladic calls defense witness

May 19, 2014

Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic has called his first witness in his defense at the UN court in the Hague. He faces 11 charges, including genocide, during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

https://p.dw.com/p/1C2MP
In this image taken from video former Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic speaks to the court during his appearance at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Tuesday Jan. 28, 2014 in the Hague Netherlands. Mladic slammed the United Nations¿ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Tuesday as a ¿satanic court¿ and refused to testify as a defense witness for his former political master, Radovan Karadzic. A courtroom reunion of the two alleged chief architects of Serb atrocities during Bosnia¿s 1992-95 war lasted only about an hour as Mladic repeatedly told judges he would not answer former Bosnian Serb President Karadzic¿s questions, citing ill health and an unwillingness to risk incriminating himself.(AP Photo/ICTY, Via Associated Press Television)
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/ICTY

A summary of the testimony from the witness, Mile Sladoje, a former assistant commander of a Serb battalion in Sarajevo, was read by one of Mladic's lawyers at the hearing. He said he was never ordered to fire on civilians in the besieged Bosnian capital which is one of the key charges Mladic faces at the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague.

The ICTY is a body of the UN established to prosecute serious crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and to try their perpetrators.

Sladoje denied being ordered by Mladic to target civilians in a sniping and shelling campaign during the three-year siege of the city during which some 10,000 people were killed - most of them Muslims. Mladic denies the charges and claims he was simply a soldier following orders.

Mladic is specifically accused of a role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica; Europe's worst atrocity since the second World War. Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-defended safe area in July 1995. Mladic was the general in charge of the troops.

The former general was only arrested in 2011 after evading arrest for 16 years. He had been living in northern Serbia under an assumed name.

Mladic denies the charges.

jm/rc (AP, dpa)