Mladic Receives Army Pension: Lawyer

Alleged war criminal Ratko Mladic, who is facing charges of genocide at a court in The Hague after extradition from Serbia, has had his army pension unblocked, according to his attorney.

Mladic’s £714 a month pension had been frozen in 2005, but he has now received £44,000 in back pay from Serbian authorities, said Milos Saljic.

[Mladic’s] son (Darko) already retrieved the sum of some 4.7 million dinars (£44,000) sometime last week, Saljic said, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper of Britain.

Mladic reportedly applied for his pension to be unfrozen right after his arrest on May 26. He had been a fugitive for 16 years.

The Telegraph reported that the Serbian government has continued to pay the pensions for other war criminals that have appeared in court on similar charges.

Saljic further said that Mladic’s family will visit him in the Hague later this year, Mladic will appear in court next in July.

Meanwhile, the capture and prosecution of Mladic may not be enough to secure Serbia’s membership in the European Union, given that he was a fugitive for so long and reportedly was seen by witnesses in various places within the country during that time.

Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor at the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said: The fact remains that [Mladic] was at large for 16 years. This raises troubling questions about how it was possible for this individual to elude the substantial resources of a state system for so many years.