Ratko Mladic lawyers seek six-month delay of war crimes trial Mladic, 70, stands accused of carrying out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and the massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica, Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War. "The defence respectfully requests an adjournment and continuance of trial for six months, or in the alternative, that the chamber bar the prosecution from utilising at trial any exhibit or witness that was the subject of late disclosure," lawyers Branko Lukic and Miodrag Stojanovic said in a statement. Dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia," Mladic is accused over the slaughter at Srebrenica where almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were systematically murdered in July 1995. Prosecutors also hold him responsible for the 44-month siege of Sarajevo where his forces waged a "terror campaign" of sniping and shelling that left 10,000 civilians dead. It was in pursuit of a "Greater Serbia" that Mladic allegedly ordered his troops to "cleanse" Bosnian towns, driving out Croats, Muslims and other non-Serb residents. After the war, Mladic continued his military career but went into hiding in 2000 after then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic's government fell. An indicted war criminal, he spent 16 years on the run until May 2011 when he was found and arrested at a relative's house in Lazarevo, northeastern Serbia and flown to a prison in The Hague a few days later.