ICTY Says Defendant Mentally Unfit to Stand Trial

The ICTY has held that Vladimir “Rambo” Kovacevic, a former office in the Yugoslav army, is mentally unfit to stand trial. According to the Tribunal, “[t]he accused does not have the capacity to plead, to understand the nature of the charges, to understand the course of proceedings, to understand the details of the evidence… to testify.” Kovacevic has been on provisional release in Serbia and Montenegro to receive psychiatric treatment since 2004.

Kovacevic is charged with various war crimes, including murder and cruel treatment, in connection with a Serbian attack on Dubrovnik in 1991. Kovacevic commanded one of the units that shelled the city. The attack caused an estimated $10 million of damage to Dubrovnik’s old town, which UNESCO has designated a World Cultural Heritage Site.

The Tribunal will permit the prosecution to continue if Kovacevic’s mental health improves. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time the Tribunal has held a defendant mentally unfit to stand trial.