Former Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is in a prison hospital at The Hague tonight but will go before the war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia as scheduled tomorrow to face charges of genocide, his court-appointed lawyer said this evening.
Aleksandar Aleksic, a prominent Belgrade lawyer appointed by the tribunal today to represent the 69-year-old former Bosnia Serb army commander, said he had met his client in a hospital room set aside for Hague defendants.
He said the health of the man who is now the tribunal's biggest case had deteriorated because of long years of neglect while a fugitive from justice.
The tribunal said medical supervision was routine.
"It is the Tribunal's regular procedure to carry out medical examinations including tests during the first days of arrival of an accused at the detention unit," it said in a statement.
"The same procedure applies to Mladic. So there is absolutely nothing unusual in the fact that Mladic is held at the medical facility of the prison where those tests can be performed.
"At this point there is absolutely no indication that he will not appear in the courtroom. In fact the opposite is true."
Mr Aleksic said Mladic "has not had proper health care for years and his condition is not good".
As reported in Serbian media following his capture last Thursday, Mladic has partially lost the use of one hand due to a stroke suffered years ago.
But Mr Aleksic said he seemed mentally capable and responsive.
Mladic is due to face the tribunal tomorrow to answer its gravest charge, that of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim males and for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995 in which some 12,000 were killed.
"He will be transferred to the detention unit tomorrow. He is in a prison hospital, which has two rooms dedicated to UN detainees," Mr Aleksic said.
He has a room to himself with a small outdoor yard where he can walk and has been making phone calls to his family, he said.
"I am going to ask tomorrow that he be given additional medical tests," Mr Aleksic added.
The former Serb commander will have an opportunity at tomorrow's hearing to talk in public about his health and about conditions in detention.
Serbian media reports say he is unlikely to enter a plea at tomorrow's hearing.
Under the rules of the war crimes tribunal, he can defer that step for 30 days, a court spokeswoman confirmed.
The general was arrested in a Serb village last week nearly 16 years after his indictment. Most of that time he managed to live discreetly but safely in Belgrade, relying on loyal supporters who consider him a hero of the Bosnian war.
He was initially held in detention in the same facility as his political alter-ego, the wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, who was captured in 2008 and who has been on trial since October 2009.
The Belgrade-based lawyer who represented Mladic for the week following his arrest, but failed to prevent extradition on grounds of ill health, said today that the general was treated for cancer in 2009.
Milos Saljic said he had a medical report showing Mladic has received surgery and chemotherapy to treat him from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2009 and had sent it to the tribunal.
Serb justice minister Snezana Malovic and Serbian deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric have dismissed the cancer claim.
Lawyers for Mladic and Karadzic say the two defendants are likely to meet soon, to discuss a possibility that their cases may be joined, at their own request or that of prosecutors.
The International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, set up in 1993, has been criticised for lengthy procedures and is likely to avoid any move that would complicate completion of its two biggest remaining cases.
A career soldier, Mladic was branded "the butcher of the Balkans" in the late 1990s after his campaign in the Bosnia war to seize territory for Serbs following the break up of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation of six republics.
Serb nationalists believe Mladic simply defended the nation and did no worse than Croat or Bosnian Muslim army commanders.
Agencies