The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), the successor institution to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, has once again rejected a request by Ratko Mladić for temporary release from prison on health grounds, where he is serving a life sentence for war crimes.
Mladić, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska the Bosnian Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina — was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2021 for genocide and war crimes committed during the Bosnian war.
The Mechanism stated on Thursday that independent medical experts concluded that the Medical Service of the United Nations Detention Unit and the prison hospital are adequately monitoring and treating Mladić’s medical condition.
“They found no deficiency in care or treatment that would justify his release,” the statement said.
According to the tribunal, Mladić has been permanently transferred to a newly constructed prison hospital facility equipped to provide multidisciplinary care for detainees with complex medical conditions.
“Mladić is being housed in a modern prison hospital with continuous monitoring and rapid transfers to civilian hospitals when necessary,” the Mechanism added.
The court also noted that he is receiving appropriate palliative care, assistance with daily activities, as well as access to interpreters and staff who speak his language.
His defense team had requested temporary release, arguing that his health condition had severely deteriorated and that he required specialized hospital treatment.
Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujić visited Mladić on April 20 and urged the Hague tribunal to allow him to receive treatment outside prison.
This marks the second time Mladić’s request for release on medical grounds has been denied.
In June 2025, his defense sought temporary or early release based on what they described as a terminal diagnosis and limited life expectancy, but the request was also rejected on the grounds that he was receiving comprehensive medical care.
Ratko Mladić was definitively convicted in The Hague on June 8, 2021, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He has remained in detention under the supervision of the international tribunal since his arrest in Serbia in 2011.
The Hague ruling found him guilty of genocide against approximately 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica — a UN-protected zone — during the summer of 1995. He was also convicted for the persecution and forced displacement of Bosniaks and Croats across Bosnia, the terror campaign against civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and the taking of UN peacekeepers as hostages during NATO airstrikes in 1995.
Mladić was convicted on 10 out of 11 counts of the indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
