UK welcomes UN court decision to uphold Mladic's life sentence

UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab on Tuesday welcomed a UN court appeal judgment upholding the life sentence against former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Srebrenica over two decades ago.

"The UK has played a vital role in bringing Ratko Mladic and other war criminals to justice for the crimes they committed in the Western Balkans. With Radovan Karadzic serving his life sentence in a British jail, and Ratko Mladic's convictions upheld, the international community has brought some solace to the survivors and families of victims, and helped puncture impunity for the worst international crimes imaginable," Raab said in a statement.

Earlier on Tuesday, judges of the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) affirmed the life imprisonment sentence of the former commander of Bosnian Serbs. At the same time, Mladic was not found guilty of the genocide of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in 1995.

Mladic, 78, served as commander of the army of Republika Srpska during the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was arrested by the Serbian authorities in 2011 after fleeing international justice for 16 years. In November 2017, the UN Criminal Tribunal in The Hague convicted Mladic of war crimes that date back to that conflict, including for his role in the Srebrenica massacre, in which scores of Bosnian Muslims were killed. Mladic was sentenced to life in prison.

On May 26, the former president of Republika Srpska and ex-Bosnian Serb wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, was transferred from the Hague to a prison in the south of England to serve out his life sentence for war crimes. (ANI/Sputnik)

( With inputs from ANI )