Criminal liability

Notion(s) Filing Case
Appeal Judgement - 08.06.2021 MLADIĆ Ratko
(MICT-13-56-A)

36. [...] [T]he charges against Mladić did not implicate him as a physical perpetrator, concerned a vast amount of territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and spanned over three years. Relevant jurisprudence dictates that, while an indictment is required to plead material facts through which the Prosecution seeks to establish an accused’s criminal liability, as the proximity of the accused person to those events becomes more distant, less precision is required in relation to those particular details, and greater emphasis is placed upon the conduct of the accused person himself upon which the Prosecution relies to establish his responsibility as an accessory or a superior to the persons who personally committed the acts giving rise to the charges against him. Indeed, in cases concerning extensive and continuous criminality, specificity with respect to the timing, victims, and location of “representative” incidents of criminality may satisfy the obligation of providing sufficient notice of the nature of the crime to effectively prepare his defence.

[1] [Footnote omitted].

[2] Kvočka et al. Appeal Judgement, para. 65.

[3] Cf. Galić Appeal Judgement, paras. 3, 222, 223, nn. 636, 637 (noting that in a case charging an accused with conducting a campaign of shelling and sniping for nearly two years, the Prosecution was bound to provide details about some of the sniping and shelling incidents in the indictment but was under no obligation to list all the specific incidents in order to satisfy its obligation in pleading material facts so as to provide the accused notice of the nature of the case he had to meet).

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