The Association of Genocide Victims and Witnesses and the Association “Movement of the Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves” pushed back after Aleksandar Vučić asked that Ratko Mladić be released or sent to Serbia for treatment. The groups said the request was not just misplaced, but already answered.
Their reaction matters now because it puts a fresh political appeal in direct conflict with a legal process that has already moved on. Mladić, a legally convicted war criminal, remains at the center of a dispute over whether medical treatment should ever be grounds for release or transfer, and the associations chose to answer Vučić’s public intervention immediately after his speech.
The groups said earlier defense requests for Mladić’s release or treatment in Serbia had already been rejected. They said those rejections rested on reports from independent medical experts, not on politics or sympathy. That distinction is the point they wanted to make: in their view, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts decides on the basis of its own expert assessments and those of independent bodies, not on public appeals or political initiatives.
That leaves Vučić’s request in direct tension with the process the associations described. He pressed for treatment in Serbia, but they said the same kind of request had already been turned down through the mechanism’s established review. They did not say that his speech changed the legal position, only that it revived a case they believe had already been settled by medical evidence.
For now, the dispute is less about one man’s condition than about who gets to shape the outcome. The associations have made clear they want the decision kept in the hands of expert assessments, while Vučić’s appeal keeps the question alive in public view. What happens next depends on whether the mechanism sees any reason to revisit a request it has already rejected.
