Serbian government jet carrying Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic has landed in the Netherlands, where he will be tried by a UN court for genocide.

The plane touched down at Rotterdam airport hours after judges in Belgrade rejected his appeal to delay his extradition on grounds of ill health, and Serbian justice minister Snezana Malovic authorised his handover to UN officials in The Hague.Mladic was arrested last Thursday in a village north of Belgrade after 16 years on the run.Advertisement >> His defence had argued the 69-year-old is not mentally and physically fit to stand trial.Mladic is charged at the tribunal for atrocities committed by his Serb troops during Bosnia's 1992/95 war.They include the notorious Srebrenica massacre that left 8,000 Muslim men and boys dead - the worst atrocity against civilians in Europe since the Second World War.Earlier Mladic was briefly released from the jail cell, travelling in a secret high-security...

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Russian court upholds Khodorkovsky conviction

Russian appeals court upheld a multibillion-dollar theft and money laundering conviction against jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Tuesday and reduced his 14-year prison sentence to 13 years.The Moscow City Court ruling means former Yukos chief Khodorkovsky, who fell foul of the Kremlin during Vladimir Putin's presidency and has been jailed since 2003, is to remain in prison well into 2016.&nb...

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former Labour minister was jailed for 16 months on Friday after admitting dishonestly claiming 30,000 pounds of parliamentary expenses

former Labour minister was jailed for 16 months on Friday after admitting dishonestly claiming 30,000 pounds of parliamentary expenses for mortgage repayments, including for a loan that had already been paid off.Elliot Morley, who was fisheries and later environment minster between 1997 and 2006, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in London after pleading guilty to two charges of false accounting at a hearing last month.He had claimed 800 pounds a month for 3-1/2 years for interest payments on a mortgage on his home in Winterton, Lincolnshire.But the interest payments were actually far lower, varying between five and 50 pounds a month. When the mortgage was redeemed in February 2006 Morley continued to submit his 800 pound monthly claims, an act the judge, Mr Justice Saunders, described...

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Media organisations should be told in advance about applications for gagging orders against them, one of Britain's top judges recommended

Media organisations should be told in advance about applications for gagging orders against them, one of Britain's top judges recommended on Friday, amid growing tensions over media freedom and the right to privacy.Media groups and politicians have expressed concern about a perceived rise in gagging orders, which they fear could be being used to quash information of genuine public interest rather than as a legitimate tool to protect someone's privacy."Where privacy and confidentiality are involved, a degree of secrecy is often necessary to do justice," David Neuberger, Master of the Rolls, the second most senior judge in England and Wales, told a briefing."But where secrecy is ordered it should only be to the extent strictly necessary to achieve the interests of justice."The use of injunctions,...

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Court injunctions banning the media from reporting that the rich and famous have won gagging orders should only be granted where strictly necessary

Court injunctions banning the media from reporting that the rich and famous have won gagging orders should only be granted where strictly necessary, a long-awaited judicial report said on Friday.Newspapers and broadcasters who may be silenced by such bans should also be informed beforehand, according to senior judge David Neuberger.But in a note of warning, he urged MPs opposed to injunctions to think twice before using their centuries-old right of unrestricted freedom of speech in parliament to undermine them.Neuberger began an inquiry last year after a row over a super-injunction granted to married England football captain John Terry to stop the media publicising his affair with a teammate's ex-girlfriend.Super-injunctions ban the publication of details of the case in question and any mention...

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Top judge attacks MPs who reveal injunctions

The Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge questioned whether it was a good idea for MPs and Lords to be "flouting a court order just because they disagree with a court order or for that matter because they disagree with the law of privacy which Parliament has created".His comments, which will be seen by critics as an attempt to censor parliamentary proceedings, came at a launch of a major review of injunctions which found that reports of comments made by MPs and peers which set out to contravene court orders may be in contempt of court.Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls and the senior judge who chaired the inquiry, said the law surrounding the issue was "astonishingly unclear" which was "very unsatisfactory".It comes after Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming recently highlighted two cases in Parliament.He...

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