The approval of a life sentence in The Hague to the former commander of the Bosnian Serbs, General Ratko Mladic, is a politicized and unjust act, international justice cannot be used to reprisal leaders disliked by the West, Elena Panina, a member of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, told RIA Novosti.
On Tuesday, judges of the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IOMT) in The Hague announced a verdict on an appeal against Mladic’s 2017 life sentence. The previous verdict was fully confirmed to him.
According to Panina, this decision is a logical continuation of the line of the Hague Tribunal and its “residual mechanisms”, according to which the Serbs are declared the main perpetrators of war crimes, and the atrocities of other participants in the conflict are hushed up and remain unpunished.
“This is a politicized, biased and unfair sentence. The ICTY has always been guided in its work not by legal criteria, but by political guidelines. It is no coincidence that 70 percent of those accused and convicted by this body are Serbs,” Panina said.
She noted that “the activity of the ICTY and its” subsidiary structure “, MOMUT, raises a lot of questions, it should be thoroughly analyzed by Russian lawyers and their colleagues from other countries.” “We must not allow the mechanisms of international justice to be used as instruments of political reprisals against leaders who are displeasing to the West,” said a member of the Duma committee.