Theodor Meron

Miletic is serving his sentence in a prison in Finland.

Decision taken by majority of judges

From the top of the UN military vehicle a UN UNPROFOR soldier scans the hillside with his binoculars looking for snipers and other military activity during the siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina, 1994. Photo: EPA/FEHIM DEMIR

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals on Wednesday denied Radovan Karadzic's motion for an appeal chamber to be appointed at the Hague court to decide on his request to review a previous decision that rejected his appeal against the final verdict in his trial sentencing him to life in prison.

Radovan Karadzic in court in April 2016. Photo: EPA/ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/POOL.

Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic has submitted an appeal against the decision not to allow him to appeal his second-instance verdict, sentencing him to life in prison for genocide in Srebrenica, among other crimes.

However he was acquitted of committing genocide in several other Bosnian municipalities in 1992.

Karadzic appealed against the verdict, insisting that there was "no evidence for the accusations concerning the intention to implement ethnic cleansing".

The president of the UN war crimes court in The Hague, Theodor Meron, criticised Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic for denying that the Srebrenica massacres were an act of genocide.

Theodor Meron, the presiding judge in Radovan Karadzic’s appeal against genocide and war crimes convictions, removed himself from the case after the former Bosnian Serb political leader’s defence accused him of bias.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic asked the UN court in The Hague to exclude judge Theodor Meron from his appeal procedure due to alleged bias, after he was removed from Ratko Mladic’s trial.

Mladic, a military leader of Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992-95 conflict, was previously found guilty on war crimes and genocide charges and sentenced to life in prison - a ruling that both Mladic and the prosecution have appealed against.

At a status conference in the Radovan Karadzic case at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday, presiding judge Theodor Meron said the plan was that the final verdict will be handed down in December.