‘The Hague-based tribunal has been pronouncing sentences of life imprisonment contrary to its own Statute which prescribes that the Trial Chamber, in passing prison sentences, ought to consider the general practice of the courts of the former Yugoslavia when it comes to pronouncements of life sentence,’ Assistant Justice Minister Čedomir Backović remarked during the United Nations Security Council session held for the semi-annual debate and report on the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague (‘the IRMCT’).
On that occasion, Mr Backović noted that the official reports on the state of Ratko Mladić’s health were being withheld from his family. Highlighting that Mr Mladić underwent surgery under the pandemic-driven conditions despite the recommendation of the Dutch authorities that non-urgent medical procedures should not be performed, Mr Backović said that the decision of the Appeals Chamber that information pertaining to Mr Mladić’s health be shared with his medical team once a week, was not being respected and that such disregard was without repercussions. ‘How can problems of this kind be solved when the IRMCT Registry ignores the decisions of the IRMCT chambers, and when the President of the IRMCT leaves those decisions to his administration without a single reaction, without even calling on the administration to respect its own court’s decisions?!’, he stated.
Mr Backović explained that sentences of life imprisonment which had been imposed on five citizens of the Republic of Serbia outside the scope of the tribunal's Statute, had had far-reaching consequences, with some dying while serving their sentences. This − he noted − made the need for resolution of the said legal nonsense more prominent.
Mr Backović added that Serbia was yet to receive a response from the United Nations Security Council regarding its initiative to have its citizens serve the Tribunal-pronounced sentences in Serbia, their home country – a matter which must not remain unresolved before the IRMCT’s mandate expires. He reiterated that Serbia was ready to accept responsibility and accountability over the enforcement of sentences imposed on its citizens, and to agree to international supervision in that respect. ‘The competent institutions are prepared to give clear guarantees that the convicted persons will not be released early without the appropriate decisions of the IRMCT,’ he reiterated.
Mr Backović stressed that Serbia was insistent on having the same conditions for early release apply to its citizens who had been convicted by the Tribunal and had since served two-thirds of their prison sentences. He explained that, for the first time in 2019, the majority of the requests for early release submitted to the IRMCT President by Serbian citizens who had served two-thirds of their sentences, had not been addressed.
On the subject of outstanding issues and no response from the IRMCT, Mr Backović added that Serbia had submitted many volumes of documents to the IRMCT Prosecutor’s Office, the IRMCT Chambers and the Defence Teams, and that its position was that documentation which had not entered into evidence ought to be returned to the authorities which had originally shared them.
As a final remark, Mr Backović said that although the IRMCT − which was to finalise its residual proceedings as well as to resolve the outstanding issues concerning the enforcement of sentences, potential reviews of proceedings and the archives − had not fully met a single one of its objectives, he hoped that it would do so by 2021, now that its mandate had been extended until then.