A United Nations court at The Hague is scheduled to deliver its final verdict on June 8 on an appeal by former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic against his genocide conviction.
The ruling will close the case against the man dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia," who has challenged his 2017 conviction and life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed during Bosnia-Herzegovina's 1992-95 war.
These included the massacre in and around the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in mid-1995 when some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces.
Mladic, 78, is expected to be in the court, where he has previously delivered angry outbursts against the West and accused the judges of lying.
Relatives of some of the men and boys killed at Srebrenica in the worst act of bloodshed on European soil since World War II will be outside the court where they have long campaigned for justice.
Mladic has maintained his innocence. The appeal case has been repeatedly delayed by his ill health and, more recently, by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The court also found Mladic's political chief, Radovan Karadzic, guilty of similar charges, including genocide, in 2016, and sentenced him to 40 years in prison. In 2019, Karadzic’s prison term was changed to a life sentence.
Karadzic and Mladic were among the last suspects put on trial by the UN tribunal in The Hague for the civil war.
