Detention Unit

Ratko Mladic's defence team told BIRN on Wednesday that the former Bosnian Serb Army commander, who is appealing against his conviction for genocide and other wartime crimes, should be hospitalised immediately in The Hague because his health condition is now "disastrous".

Radovan Karadzic's lawyer Peter Robinson told BIRN that the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals decided earlier this month to temporarily allow UN Detention Unit prisoners to make video calls to immediate relatives after the former Bosnian Serb political leader appealed to the UN court.

First President of the Republic of Srpska, Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, who awaits to be transferred to other prison to serve life sentence, asked the President of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague to allow him to use an video link to talk to his family from prison.

Radovan Karadzic's lawyer Peter Robinson said on Monday that the decision not to allow inmates at the United Nations Detention Unit in the Netherlands was wrong because it prevented his client, a long-term detainee, from communicating with his family.

The registrar's office at Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals has said that it will listen in on Radovan Karadzic's telephone calls for several days after he addressed a public debate in Montenegro by phone from the UN Detention Unit in the Netherlands.