Mladic ‘using delaying tactics’

Attorney Milos Saljic asked for a battery of doctors to examine the 69-year old.

Mladic was arrested last week after 16 years on the run, and is said to have suffered at least two strokes.

Mr Saljic says he has mailed his appeal from an unspecified post office in Belgrade today.

Court officials will now need to wait for it and review it before moving forward with the case.

Bruno Vekaric, Serbia’s deputy war crimes prosecutor, says Mladic is employing delaying tactics and that nothing should prevent his extradition to the international war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands.

But Mr Saljic said the former general is so ill he will not live to see the start of his trial on genocide charges.

The UN tribunal charged Mladic with genocide in 1995, accusing him of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and other war crimes of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

On Sunday night, protesters throwing stones and bottles clashed with baton-wielding riot police in Belgrade after several thousand Serbian nationalist supporters of Mladic rallied outside the parliament building to demand his release.

About 100 people were arrested and 16 minor injuries were reported.

Rioters overturned rubbish bins, broke traffic lights and let off firecrackers as they rampaged through the city centre.