Judge Rejects Bid to Delay Verdict for Ratko Mladic in Bosnian Genocide<br />Asked what Russian or Serbian doctors could do for Mr. Mladic<br />that Dutch doctors could not, Mr. Ivetic said suspicions grew when the defense could not obtain Mr. Mladic’s full records, test results or medical imagery to evaluate his condition.<br />12, 2017<br />PARIS — A verdict in one of the most closely watched war crimes cases in recent history — the genocide trial of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general held responsible for the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men<br />and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 — is expected this month, after a judge rejected defense lawyers’ pleas to postpone the judgment.<br />Dan Ivetic, an American lawyer who is the co-counsel on the Mladic team, said his client’s condition — already weakened<br />by two strokes by the time he was arrested in 2011 — has worsened since his trial ended last December.<br />Lawyers have demanded that Serbian doctors review Mr. Mladic’s condition, insisting<br />that court-appointed physicians have been playing down their client’s dire state and neglected to carry out important tests for heart disease and brain damage.<br />This year, the court had also turned down Mr. Mladic request to be treated in Russia or Serbia,<br />because it said there was a risk he would not return to The Hague.<br />But Mr. Mladic has not resisted treatment and even thanked his caretakers a few years ago for saving his life after arriving in The Hague in 2011, as he put it, "with one foot in the grave." Yet tension between Mr. Mladic’s caretakers<br />and his lawyers have grown this year after he was rushed to a hospital for an undisclosed crisis in March.
