SITUATION REGARDING POSSIBLE TEMPORARY RELEASE DUE TO WIFE'S DEATH VERY DELICATE; KARADŽIĆ’S HEALTH NOT GOOD

BELGRADE, FEBRUARY 19 /SRNA/ – Goran Petronijević, a member of Radovan Karadžić's legal team, told SRNA that due to confidentiality he cannot speak about a possible temporary release of Karadžić from a British prison following the death of his wife, stressing that the situation is extremely delicate and that the health condition of the first Republika Srpska president is not good at all.

"We cannot speak about that now. There have been various stories about whether he will be allowed to come. Unfortunately, the procedure is very complicated and falls into the category of so-called confidential requests, so I cannot even discuss it," Petronijević said. Asked how long such a process would normally take and whether there would be enough time for Karadžić to attend the funeral of his wife Ljiljana tomorrow in Pale, Petronijević said that, unfortunately, there would not be. "His health condition is not good at all," Petronijević said, adding that he does not yet know whether Karadžić has even been informed of his wife's death. "He has not communicated with me; we did not speak last night. Whether he has spoken with someone from his family, one should ask them," he said. According to him, it is also a question of how that information might affect Karadžić's already serious health condition. "The situation is very delicate. He is in poor health. How what happened could affect him, I'd rather not even say," Petronijević emphasized. Regarding the Hague Mechanism and whether it would respond to a possible request for temporary release due to his wife's death, Petronijević expressed doubt, recalling that Karadžić was not allowed to attend his brother’s funeral nor the forty-day memorial service while he was in The Hague, let alone now from prison. Petronijević added that he will probably attend the funeral of Karadžić's wife tomorrow in Pale. Speaking about Karadžić's health condition, Petronijević said that the first president of Republika Srpska is currently in the prison infirmary. "As soon as they transfer him to the infirmary, which means the situation is bad," Petronijević added. He noted that General Ratko Mladić was denied extraordinary release on the grounds that he was "not in the terminal phase," after General Nebojša Pavković, who was seriously ill with cancer, had been released. "They are criminals; they let you go only so that you don't die there, so you won't be a burden to them," Petronijević said. Petronijević assessed that the situation in the world is changing and that the Mechanism has lost funding from the United States, raising the question of how long the EU will bear the "burden" of that court. "The very fact that the current American administration did it shows that they have tacitly acknowledged what we have been saying - that it is not a court, but simply a punitive expedition, a disciplinary body of NATO," Petronijević said. The first president of Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague Tribunal for alleged war crimes in BiH, and in 2021 he was transferred to serve his sentence in a British prison on the Isle of Wight. Ljiljana Zelen-Karadžić died yesterday in Istočno Sarajevo at the age of 81. By profession, Mrs. Karadžić was a neuropsychiatrist and served as president of the Red Cross of Republika Srpska from 1993 to 2002. She will be buried tomorrow at the Bare city cemetery in Pale.