Russia urges fair trial for accused Bosnian war criminal Mladic

Moscow expects that former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic will receive a fair trial on war crimes charges, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

“We expect that the upcoming trial against Ratko Mladic will be fair and unbiased,” the ministry said in a statement.

Serbian authorities announced on Thursday that Mladic had been arrested in Serbia after more than a decade on the run from war crimes charges.

Mladic, 69, is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for playing a key role in ethnic cleansing during Bosnian war in 1992-95, including the murder of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995.

He is being held at the special war crimes court in Belgrade awaiting extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Mladic, whose actions were supported by the then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, is still considered a hero by many Serbians.

Serbian news agency Tanjug reported on Friday that police in Belgrade had arrested at least 35 people during clashes with nationalist protesters following Mladic arrest.

MOSCOW, May 27 (RIA Novosti)

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