Embarrassing slip-up in Mladić trial

The UN Tribunal in the Hague on Thursday postponed the trial against the presumed Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladić for an indefinite period, accusing the prosecution of having denied the defence lawyers access to certain documents. The conservative daily Lidové noviny is highly critical of the court: "Normal people can only wonder it could come to this. After all, Ratko Mladić was arrested in May 2011, the prosecution has had a full year to gather evidence. How can it be that their arguments are so weak that the trial can't even start? The situation is doubly embarrassing because the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sits in The Hague, in the Netherlands. It was Dutch troops that were supposed to protect Srebrenica in 1995, and who ultimately delivered the people there into Mladić's hands. Years later, the Dutch government got into difficulties over these events. That should have been lesson enough, but now the International Criminal Tribunal in the Dutch city of The Hague has shown us that no lesson whatsoever has been learned from this experience."

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