U.N. Court to Hear New Mass Grave Evidence in Mladic Case

The Yugoslav war crimes court on Thursday ruled prosecutors may include new evidence in their genocide case against Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, following the shock discovery of a hidden mass grave last year.

"The Trial Chamber... granted today the prosecution's motion to reopen its case to present recently discovered evidence regarding the Tomasica mass grave," the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said.

Prosecutors in February closed their arguments in the case against Mladic, 72, who faces 11 counts before The Hague-based tribunal over his role in Bosnia's 1992-1995 civil war that left 100,000 dead and 2.2 million others homeless.

Discovered in September last year, forensic experts have so far exhumed 450 victims from the Tomasica mass grave, believed to be one of the largest dating from the Balkans country's inter-ethnic conflict.

As many as 900 victims could be buried at the abandoned mine at Tomasica, situated in Bosnia's northwestern Prijedor municipality.

The bodies are believed to be those of Muslims and Croats tortured and killed by Bosnian Serb forces at the start of the war that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

Prosecutors asked the judges in August to allow them to submit the new evidence.

"The Chamber is satisfied that while the Tomasica mass grave was discovered in September 2013, at a time when the prosecution's case-in-chief was ongoing, the necessary analysis as well as compiling witness statements and expert reports continued up to August 2014," the judges said.

The prosecution will now be able to tender new evidence from seven witnesses, six experts as well as additional documentary evidence, the ICTY said.

Prosecutors say they believed the new evidence is "directly relevant to the charges in the indictment (against Mladic), namely the joint criminal enterprise to permanently remove non-Serbs from Serb-claimed Bosnian territory in 1992."

Prosecutors in the case against Mladic's political alter ego Radovan Karadzic made a similar request but it was turned down because Karadzic's trial was far more advanced.

Once one of Europe's most wanted men, Mladic was arrested in northern Serbia in May 2011. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

If convicted he could face live in prison.

The institute for missing persons in Bosnia is still searching for 1,200 people from the 3,000 who went missing in the Prijedor area.