Judge rules Serbian Mladic fit to face justice

The ruling, in a Serbian court, came after Mladic\'s son said that the man accused of masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities was too sick to be transferred for trial at the UN-backed court in The Hague.

"It has been established that Ratko Mladic\'s health condition makes him fit to stand trial," Judge Maja Kovacevic told reporters outside Serbia\'s special war crimes court.

"We have decided the conditions for transfer have been met," she continued.

"Doctors say he is physically fit to follow the procedure despite the fact that he is suffering from several chronic illnesses."

Mladic\'s lawyer Milos Saljic told reporters he would appeal the ruling on Monday -- within the required three days.

Mladic, said Kovacevic, had refused to accept the indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where he faces charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

The ICTY indictment holds him responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, Europe\'s deadliest since World War II, in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were rounded up and killed.

It also accuses him of having overseen the 44-month siege of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, during which 10,000 were killed.

Earlier Friday, Mladic\'s son Darko told reporters that his father was not strong enough to be transferred to the tribunal in The Hague.

"I am not a doctor but my opinion is that he is not fit at the moment," he said after a meeting with his father.

Mladic\'s first court appearance in Belgrade on Thursday, following his arrest just hours earlier, was halted after his lawyer Saljic said he was too ill to speak.

Darko Mladic said Friday the family would ask for a team of independent doctors, possibly from Russia, to check his father. A brain scan had already given cause for concern, he added.

"The scan showed two scars from cerebral haemorrhages," he said. Mladic\'s family has already said that he has suffered strokes.

In The Hague, ICTY spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said the tribunal was equipped to care for people with illnesses.

"We have our own medical unit and we also have access to the Dutch medical system, civilian and prison," she said.

Serbian President Boris Tadic meanwhile announced an investigation to establish who had helped protect Mladic during his years in hiding.

"We\'ll extend our investigation to see how he created a protection system or to see if it is possible that some people from the former armed forces or police were involved in the protection," he told the BBC.

He promised a "full and complete picture" of the network that helped Mladic stay free for nearly 16 years.

But in comments to CNN television, he rejected any link between the timing of the arrest and Serbia\'s ambitions for European Union membership, dismissing reports that Serbian officials had long known where Mladic was hiding.

"I can say this kind of comment -- that we knew where Ratko Mladic was for years -- let me use a quite undiplomatic wording, is rubbish," he said.

But the head of the opposition Serbian Progressive Party, Tomislav Nikolic, insisted that Mladic\'s arrest raised such questions.

"Who had seen and recognised this man? Did Serbia maybe know where Mladic was all along? What made them decide to arrest him" on Thursday? he asked.

Newspaper accounts of Mladic\'s arrest reported that Serbian intelligence officers and a special team tracking war criminals swooped early Thursday on Lazarevo, a village around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Belgrade, close to the Romanian border.

Mladic was found alone in one of the houses and, although armed, offered no resistance.

News of Mladic\'s arrest was largely welcomed around the world.

But 500 ultra-nationalists in the northern city of Novi Sad protested his arrest on Thursday.

On Friday, about 2,000 protesters in the Bosnian Serb city of Pale, mainly ex-soldiers and youths, staged their own protest.

And the Serbian ultra-nationalist Radical Party (SRS) has called for a massive protest against Mladic\'s arrest on Sunday in Belgrade.

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