AMSTERDAM: Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic will boycott the UN war crimes court, where he is scheduled to enter a plea on Monday against charges of genocide during the Bosnian war, his lawyer said on Sunday.
Arrested in May after 16 years on the run, Mladic formally was charged by the Yugoslavia tribunal in The Hague last month when the defiant general rejected war crimes charges against him as obnoxious and monstrous.
Mladic is accused over a campaign to seize territory for Serbs after Bosnia, following Croatia, broke away from the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s as the Balkan state broke up during five years of war that killed at least 130,000 people.
The 69-year-old career soldier is due to enter the plea after refusing to do so last month, but Belgrade-based attorney Milos Saljic said Mladic would boycott the hearing to demand that he be represented by his own defense lawyers.
So enter a plea of 'not guilty' on his behalf and get on with it.
Mladic is not going to appear in the courtroom tomorrow unless he is forced to. He does not want to do it because he does not have his team of lawyers yet, Saljic told Reuters.
If Mladic boycotts the hearing or refuses to enter a plea at Mondays hearing, judge Alphens Orie will likely enter one of not guilty for him.
There you go, Alphie, now set a trial date.
Mladics former political chief Radovan Karadzic boycotted the start of his trial in 2009 and it is considered unlikely that the tribunal would force Mladic to appear on Monday.
The tribunal has no official indication or confirmation that Mladic is not going to appear so I am unable to comment, court spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said.
Mladic, who has said he was only defending his country and people during the 1992-5 Bosnia war, has lodged a list of preferred defense lawyers with the court, including Saljic and a Russian lawyer, but the tribunal is still verifying the qualifications and eligibility of the attorneys. Court-appointed lawyer Aleksandar Aleksic, who represented Mladic at his first hearing, will represent him on Monday.
Mladic is accused in connection with the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica Europes worst massacre since World War Two. Hague prosecutor Serge Brammertz has said Mladic used his power to commit brutal atrocities and must answer for it, but Serb nationalists believe Mladic defended the nation and did no worse than Croat or Bosnian Muslim army commanders.
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ROME: Italy deported Algerian Yamine Bouhrama on Sunday after his prison term ended, saying he had been part of a group that tried to commit acts of terrorism on a scale exceeding the London and Madrid bombings.
Bouhrama was released from prison on Sunday after serving a six year sentence for association with the aim of international terrorism and fraud offenses, the Interior Ministry said in a statement, adding that he was immediately repatriated.
It said prior to his arrest in 2005 he had formed a militant group in Italy connected to Al-Qaeda.
This cell was ready to commit acts of terrorism on an even more devastating level than those carried out at the time by the same group in Spain and in Britain, the ministry said.
Six years for being ready to carry out terrorist acts, followed by expulsion. He's laughing all the way to Algeria.
Swedish commercial shipping firm Wallenius has employed armed security staff to police its fleet to help combat the risk posed by pirates in the Gulf of Aden.
In April the government launched an inquiry into the issue of whether Swedish vessels could make use of armed guards to protect themselves. But following its own internal investigation, Wallenius has decided to act to hire security staff, armed with assault rifles, to help protect ships as they pass the horn of Africa.
"This is no development which we would have liked to see, but we have unfortunately felt forced to act," said Peter Jodin, maritime safety manager at the shipping company, to Sveriges Radio's Ekot news programme.
The Swedish Shipowners' Association (Sveriges Redareförening) expressed their support for Wallenius' position on Friday.
"This method is unfortunately the best available and I fully understand that they have done so," said association president Håkan Friberg.
Friberg added that security matters are currently a decision for the shipping lines themselves.
"It's entirely up to the shipping companies today, they make an assessment based on the safety of the crew and the security of cargo owners," he said.
The association changed position on the issue last winter following a series of brutal attacks on vessels passing the coast of Somalia, choosing to align themselves with companies wanting to hire armed security forces.
The issue was at the same time placed under review by the government and infrastructure minister Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd described the matter as a priority, but since then there has been no clarity on the matter.
"We have not received any clear answers to the questions we have posed so far," Håkan Friberg said.
Rival Swedish shipping line, Stena Bulk, began deploying armed guards on vessels entering the hazardous area over six months ago.
"We chose early on to do so and were among the first shipping companies in the world to take the decision," said Stena Bulk CEO Ulf Ryder.
As soon as a vessel is set to enter a sensitive area, security personnel are dispatched to the ship. "Much like a load being placed on board," Ryder explained.
Ulf Ryder said that to date its security staff have not been called upon to use their weapons. "The ships are also equipped with barbed wire and large signs that state 'Armed Response' in Somali, in other words that we have weapons on board."
Unfortunately, many Somalis are illiterate. But I suppose they'll figure it out somehow...
Right about the time things start going 'kaboom!' all around them...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
