Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Presidency member Milorad Dodik asked the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts, Graciela Gatti Santana, to intervene with the United Kingdom (UK) Government to immediately take the necessary measures to stop the alleged “prison terror” against Hague prisoner Radovan Karadzic.
Karadzic is serving a life sentence on the Isle of Wight for war crimes in BiH.
Dodik pointed out that ”there is no convincing reason for the prison authorities to treat Radovan Karadzic in an extremely inhumane manner and to deny him the basic human rights guaranteed by international conventions and the practice of the so-called Nelson Mandela Rules”.
In a letter to Santana, Dodik says that ”it is her duty” to immediately send an independent commission to the prison on the Isle of Wight on behalf of the Mechanism she chairs, whose members would see for themselves the conditions in which Radovan Karadzic is serving his sentence and talk to him directly.
Furthermore, he stated that he was sure that the allegations of alleged ”unscrupulous mistreatment and mental exhaustion by the prison authorities” would be confirmed.
”Based on direct insight and conversations with Radovan Karadzic, the only reasonable decision should be for the Mechanism to revise its previous decision to place him in prison on the Isle of Wight and send him to one of the prisons in Europe where his basic human rights will not be violated,”Dodik pointed out in the letter.
Dodik expressed his belief that the president of the Mechanism, Santana, will carefully consider his letter and take the activities he proposed as soon as possible, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
