Dutch luxury seaside cell awaits the butcher of Bosnia
Ratko Mladic, indicted by an international war crimes tribunal over the killing of 10,000 civilians during the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and for the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnian War, arrived in The Hague late on Tuesday.
The Scheveningen detention center in the Hague, which is already home to the former Bosnian Serb military leader's one-time political partner, Radovan Karadzic, is set in a leafy suburb, said a Reuters report.
Other inmates whom Mladic will be joining at the international war crimes detention center include Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president charged with committing murder, rape and sexual slavery as he sought control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines or blood diamonds, and Thomas Lubanga, the Congo warlord charged with recruiting child soldiers, Reuters reported.
Compared to the prisons in the inmates' home countries, the detention center seems relatively luxurious. The location of the detention center is about 2 km (one mile) from the beach where top properties have views of rolling sand dunes and the whiff of sea spray.
Prisoners are locked in their cells -- single, not shared, and about 10 square meters in size -- from 9 at night to 7.30 in the morning, where they can watch television, read or work on their cases using computers but cannot access email or the internet.
Each cell in the ICC wing contains a bed, desk, bookshelves, a cupboard, toilet, hand basin and a telephone, although calls are placed by the center's staff.
During the day, they are free to mingle and instead of wearing prison uniforms can dress in their own clothes. In case of food, detainees can request items from a shopping list and prepare their own food.
Slobodan Milosevic, accused of genocide and other war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, died in detention on March 11, 2006, a few months before a verdict in his four-year trial.
Mladic, whose lawyers have argued that he is in poor health, is very likely to have access to good medical treatment, as the war crimes tribunal cannot afford another top war crimes suspect to die in detention in The Hague, Reuters reported.
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