Mladic defence lawyers seek disqualification of presiding judge and delay in start of trial
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Ratko Mladic has appealed to the president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to disqualify the presiding judge in his trial, accusing him of bias, and to postpone the trial scheduled to start next Wednesday.
Mladic's lawyers argue in a motion Friday that judge Alophons Orie is biased because he has sat in several other cases in which former subordinates of the ex-Bosnian Serb military chief have been convicted.
They also claim that Orie's Dutch nationality makes him biased in charges linked to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which Dutch U.N. peacekeepers have been accused of not doing enough to prevent the slaying by Serb forces of 8,000 Muslim men.
Defence lawyers say the alleged bias is so serious "that disqualification of Judge Orie is the only way of preserving the integrity of the proceedings."
