The head of the court that sentenced Radovan Karadzic to life in prison will be the one to decide where the former Bosnian Serb leader will serve his sentence, but there is no deadline for such a decision, International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) spokesperson, Helena Eggleston, told N1 on Thursday.
“Countries need to sign an agreement with the United Nations for executing these sentences,” she said, explaining that the secretary of the court needs to get in touch with the countries that have reached an agreement with IRMCT to see if they are ready to execute the punishment for the convicted person and if they meet the legislative conditions for it.
RELATED NEWS
Then the secretary submits a report on this to the IRMCT President, who then decides where the convicted person will serve.
But there is no deadline for making such a decision, she said, adding that IRMCT is currently also overseeing the execution of sentences for 17 convicted persons still serving.
She also said that there is a possibility that some of them may be released before their sentence expires.
“Stanislav Galic has in 2015 submitted a request for an early release. It was, at the time, the first case of a person sentenced to life in prison requesting early release,” she exemplified.
She explained that the then-IRMCT President, Theodor Meron, decided that when an earlier release is considered, the calculation must be based on the highest sentence, which at the time was 45 years.
This means that a person sentenced to life in prison would have to serve at least two-thirds of that sentence, in this case, 30 years, before an early release could be considered, Eggleston said.
She also mentioned the possibility of the sentence being revised, as Karadzic’s defence team announced.
The defence can submit a request for revision of a sentence at any time while the prosecution can do so only within a year, she said.
“In order for such a request to be considered, new evidence that was not available during the trial but could have been decisive for the result of that trial must emerge,” she said.
“There is always this possibility. I think that we have only had a request for revising a judgement once,” she added.
She also touched upon the sentencing of wartime Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, ‘the Butcher of Bosnia’, saying the second-instance verdict in his case is expected by the end of 2020.
