Direct translation. Edited.
[Regnum] The Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on 8 June confirmed the life sentence of General of the Bosnian Serb Army Ratko Mladic . The decision of the court of first instance, according to which General Mladic was declared guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, violation of the laws and customs of warfare and terror against civilians in November 2017, will remain in force. Only one of the judges - Priska Matimba Niyamba from Zambia - questioned the justice of the punishment assigned to General Mladic. However, her voice could not significantly affect the final decision of the court.
Interlocutors of IA REGNUM from Serbia and Russia told whether General Mladic could count on an objective trial, given the extreme bias of the Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia towards the Serbs.
The son of General Darko Mladic was not surprised by the verdict of the Appeals Chamber, but not at all because the general was really guilty of what he was convicted of. According to Darko, from the very beginning of the trial, his father Ratko Mladic had no chance of a fair trial.
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"He is actually a prisoner of war there, who is being tried for the NATO wars in the Balkans. The alliance shifted its own blame for all these events onto him, as the representative of the Serbs. In difficult war times, my father honestly defended his people, and he managed to defend them. Therefore, I perceive the verdict as a result of the frustration of the West, which failed to achieve its goal in the Balkans even by military means," Darko Mladic told a REGNUM correspondent.
The general's son highlighted the speech of the chairman of the judiciary council, Priska Matimba Niyamba from Zambia, who said that the evidence presented did not convince her that the Bosnian Serb forces were persecuting civilians in the enclave of Srebrenica with the aim of committing genocide against them.
"I am very glad that there is a woman who has found in herself enough personal and professional courage to stand up and say that whoever has read the evidence will not be able to convict General Mladic. She has already stated that the court of first instance committed violations, and that it would be correct to return the whole process to the beginning and check the facts. She was against all the charges, except for one, which related to the taking of UN employees hostage," said Darko Mladic.
According to him, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia spent three billion dollars in order to fulfill the tasks that NATO and the United States assigned to it in New York, and therefore it is especially valuable that after all this, a person was found who said: “I analyzed everything and not everything is as you say. "
"I admire this woman who, above all, wanted to be a professional in her field and refused to put interest above professionalism and fairness," added Darko.
Ratko Mladic's son also said that he saw his father after the announcement of the decision of the Appeals Chamber, and he seemed rather calm.
"In fact, his health is very poor. But every time before he has to appear in public, his health suddenly improves. Therefore, I suspected that he was being specially stimulated with medication before public appearances. I cannot say that this is exactly the case, I have no evidence, since my father does not control what he is given from the drugs. But this is not the first time. Every time he had to go out to the courtroom, he got better, and a few days after that, his condition deteriorated sharply. So now I am very worried about him, whether he will withstand the consequences," said Darko.
Darko Mladic also said that his father asked to give him the opportunity to make a speech after the announcement of the final verdict, but this request was refused.
"He told me that he was expecting such a decision, which was then read out in the courtroom. He also said that the main thing for him is that the people preserve the Republic of Srpska, since the people created it, and he only helped with his knowledge. My father gave all of himself to save the Serbian people from the destruction that threatened him in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As we can see, today, 30 years later, the West is trying to abolish the Republika Srpska, only by other means."
The decision of the Court of Appeal also came as no surprise to a leading researcher at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a member of the Russian Public Committee in Defense of General Mladich Elena Guskova . True, there was little hope for a more objective approach, because new judges were included in the court, she said.
“Therefore, today we are very saddened by what happened there. This once again confirms that all this trial was of a political nature, ”said Guskova.
The expert added that the court did not take into account either the state of health of General Mladic, or the additional materials that the defense provided to the new composition of the Court of Appeal, and all the hope that initially existed was ultimately not justified. At the same time, the historian noted that the votes of the judges were divided during the voting, and this confirms that hope did not arise from scratch.
"During the voting, the chairman of the Judicial Council Prisca Matimba Niyamba from Zambia was against the general being given a life sentence. If other judges also read the materials provided to them, the decision might sound different. The impression was that they simply did not work. And the judge who read all the materials was against the imposition of such a harsh sentence," said the historian.
Nevertheless, Guskova added, the Russian Committee in Support of General Mladic, headed by Deputy Pavel Dorokhin, will continue its work, and lawyers will try to challenge the decision of the Court of Appeal.
"There is such a possibility. Moreover, from the son of General Darko Mladic, I heard that his father is in a rather cheerful mood, and that he is not upset because he was not acquitted, since in history he will forever remain a hero. " 
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