'Butcher of Bosnia' Mladic appeals war crimes convictions
AFP / ELVIS BARUKCICFormer Bosnian Serbian commander Ratko Mladic who left a trail of fear across Bosnia
Former Bosnian Serbian commander Ratko Mladic on Thursday appealed against his convictions for genocide and war crimes, urging UN judges to acquit him on all charges.
Mladic, once dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia, was sentenced to life imprisonment in November for his role in the Balkans war, including the 1995 Srebrenica genocide -- Europe's worst bloodshed since World War II.
But in filings to a UN tribunal in The Hague on Thursday, his lawyers asked that "all erroneous findings" be reversed or quashed.
"The volume and magnitude of errors in the judgement is unprecedented," they argued, alleging the trial chamber judges had made "basic mistakes," including misidentifying Mladic's position within the Bosnian Serb leadership.
- 'No respect for life' -
Prosecutors also filed an appeal, urging that the tribunal should find Mladic, 75, guilty of a second charge of genocide in Bosnian towns, on which he was acquitted.
In one of their final verdicts, judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Mladic guilty on 10 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity such as murder and deportation.
But he was acquitted of one charge of genocide in certain municipalities.
About 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million displaced in the 1992-1995 war which erupted as ethnic rivalries tore Yugoslavia apart.
Judges said "ruthless" Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic's command carried out "mass executions" and showed "little or no respect for human life or dignity."
"For having committed these crimes, the chamber sentences Mr Ratko Mladic to life imprisonment," presiding judge Alphons Orie said as applause broke out in the public gallery.
The crimes were "amongst the most heinous known to humankind," he added.
But Mladic, who once left a trail of fear across Bosnia, was not present in the courtroom to hear the verdict in November.
In dramatic scenes he was dragged out and watched the proceedings from a neighbouring chamber, after accusing the judges in an outburst of lying, when they refused to adjourn the hearing because of his high blood pressure.
- 'Unfit' for trial -
He has suffered three strokes since being arrested in Serbia in 2011 and transferred to the court in the Hague.
His defence team again on Thursday renewed their contention that a neurologist had found Mladic's mental capacity was compromised and he was therefore "unfit to meaningfully participate in the trial."
But in his appeal, chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz called on the judges to "re-evaluate Mladic's responsibility for genocide" in the municipalities and "convict" him.
The case will now be heard by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, set up to hear the last of the cases hanging over from the ICTY.
Mladic, former Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and ex-Yugoslav president and Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic were among the top leaders, accused of forming a "joint criminal enterprise" to create a Greater Serbia by ridding the territory of Bosnian Muslims and non-Serbs.
But Milosevic died before judgement could be passed, suffering a heart attack in his cell in The Hague in March 2006.
In March 2016, Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in jail on 10 charges including genocide. He has also appealed his conviction and sentence, and two days of appeal hearings start on April 23.
Britain's May warns EU leaders of Russia threat
POOL/AFP/File / TOBY MELVILLEBritain's Prime Minister Theresa May will brief EU leaders on the progress of the investigation into the poisoning of a former Russian spy
British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday warned EU leaders that Russia posed a threat to the whole bloc as she sought united backing against Moscow after the poisoning of an ex-spy in England.
May told her colleagues at a Brussels summit the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury using a deadly Soviet-developed nerve agent showed the Russian menace "doesn't respect borders".
Her warning came as a British police officer who was also contaminated in the March 4 attack was released from hospital.
While the US, France and Germany have swung behind London, saying they accept the UK assessment that the Russian state is the only plausible culprit, other EU countries keen to protect their Kremlin ties -- notably Greece and Italy -- want a softer line.
"It is clear that the Russian threat doesn't respect borders and indeed the incident in Salisbury was part of a pattern of Russian aggression against Europe and its near neighbours," May told reporters as she arrived in Brussels.
She is expected to tell them over dinner that the threat from the east will continue "for years to come", and long after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019.
The British leader will hold crisis talks on the poisoning with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel before briefing all the EU leaders on the investigation.
She also met the leaders from the Baltic states and Denmark, Sweden and Finland who "strongly supported" London's conclusions, a senior British official said.
- 'Hostile and provocative' -
The poisoning has triggered a furious diplomatic row between London and Moscow, with tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats on both sides, while the Kremlin denies any responsibility and Russian state media have offered numerous alternative explanations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin convened a meeting of his national security council on Thursday to discuss "Britain's hostile and provocative policy towards Russia", according to a Kremlin statement.
The war of words took a fresh turn Thursday as the Kremlin slammed as "disgusting" comments by British foreign minister Boris Johnson about President Vladimir Putin seeking to exploit Russia's football World Cup in the way Adolf Hitler had used the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
British officials have been pressing European allies to follow London's lead with their own expulsions of Russian diplomats, and Lithuania's outspoken President Dalia Grybauskaite said she was giving serious thought to the matter.
"All of us we are considering such measures," Grybauskaite said as she arrived for the summit.
A French presidency source said Paris was also ready to act. "Some countries, like France, are ready for possible measures to be decided at a national level in cooperation with other European countries," the source said.
EU leaders will issue a statement on the Salisbury attack on Thursday, with a draft seen by AFP saying they will "coordinate on the consequences" for Russia but stopping short of blaming Moscow or mentioning sanctions.
Some countries are pushing to toughen up the statement to bring it in line with last week's joint declaration by Britain, France, Germany and the US pointing the finger at Russia.
- Dissenting rump -
But a dissenting rump including Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Austria, keen to preserve their good relations with Moscow, has pushed for the watered-down version, which says only that the EU takes "extremely seriously" London's view that Moscow was to blame.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged caution in the response over Salisbury, saying "we have to be very responsible".
Other leaders including Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said they needed to see more evidence.
In Britain, a court gave permission to take blood samples from Skripal and his daughter -- who are in a coma in a critical but stable condition -- for testing by the world chemical weapons body, which is probing the incident.
The poisoning comes with worries running high across Europe about Russian meddling -- from repeated cyber attacks to what the EU has called an "orchestrated strategy" of disinformation aimed at destabilising the bloc.
Aside from Salisbury, the two-day summit will also discuss news from Washington that Europe would be excluded for now from President Donald Trump's new US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.
The leaders will also discuss the scandal over harvested data from Facebook used by a British consulting firm employed by Trump's 2016 campaign team, linking the issue to election meddling.
May will depart the summit on Thursday evening, leaving the remaining 27 on Friday to approve a post-Brexit transition period and adopt guidelines for talks on future relations including a trade deal.
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