More On Mladic

Fortunately it's one of the easier Slavic names to spell.

Pretty much as I was writing my previous post on the subject a Serbian court ruled on Ratko Mladic's appeal against his extradition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. As he was appealing on the grounds of his fitness to stand trial rather then the courts fitness to hold that trial his appeal was rejected. Shortly afterwards the Serbian Ministry of Justice signed his extradition papers and he began his journey to the Netherlands at around 15:30 GMT. This decision meant that Mladic is no longer Serbia's problem.

I can only say that's a good thing because Britain have been trying to complicate the matter by comparing the Mladic case to my case against the Notting Hill Housing Trust (NHHT). America have also joined in trying to compare the Mladic case to the Khalid Sheikh Mohammad case which has been formally put before a special military tribunal while Mladic was in transit. All this is only going to cause confusion because the Maldic case is a civilian criminal case, the NHHT case is a civilian civil case and the Sheikh Mohamed case is a military case. The differences between the three are so vast it would be quicker to list the similarities. The most important difference though comes in something called the burden of proof. In a military tribunal the prosecutor merely needs to say that the person is guilty and they are convicted (1% proof). In a criminal case the prosecutor needs to convince a Jury / panel of Judges that the person is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt for them to be convicted (99% proof). In a civil case the prosecutor merely needs to convince a Jury / panel of Judges that it is more likely then not that the person is guilty (51% proof). So I suppose in some cases a civil case could be a lot like a military case provided that the Americans can keep their nerve.

So it's 19:25 on May 31st and I'm back from the pub so may the descent into drunken insanity begin.