Previously rejected humanitarian reasons

Notion(s) Filing Case
Decision on Provisional Release - 08.07.2009 PRLIĆ et al.
(IT-04-74-AR65.15)

16. The Appeals Chamber recalls that a Trial Chamber is required to assess the relevant factors as they exist at the time when it reaches its decision on provisional release as “factual circumstances on the basis of which [a previous] decision was made may well have changed by the time a new request for provisional release is before the Trial Chamber.”[1] The Appeals Chamber further recalls that when it has previously found analogous humanitarian grounds to be insufficient for granting provisional release, “the Trial Chamber should give explicit consideration to whether the additional humanitarian reasons are of a sufficiently different nature, present a higher degree of gravity or evince a more acute level of urgency than the humanitarian grounds which the Appeals Chamber already deemed insufficient”.[2]

17. […] In the Impugned Decision, the Trial Chamber took into account such additional factors as Praljak’s actual exhaustion caused by the intensity of the proceedings and the fact that he had been in detention for almost another year since the issuance of the Trial Chamber’s Decision of 17 July 2008.[3] Further, the Impugned Decision expressly refers to the existing impact on Praljak’s health as observed by the Trial Chamber, rather than any possible future impact on his health. Therefore, the Prosecution has failed to show that the Trial Chamber committed an error of law in not establishing humanitarian reasons additional to those rejected in the Praljak Decision of 28 July 2008. […]

[1] See Prlić Decision of 5 June 2009 [Prosecutor v. Jadranko Prlić et al., Case No. IT-04-74-AR65.14, Decision on Jadranko Prlić’s Appeal Against the Décision relative à la démande de mise en liberté provisoire de l’Accusé Prlić, 9 April 2009, 5 June 2009], para. 13.

[2] Petković Decision of 21 April 2008, para. 20 (emphasis added).

[3] Impugned Decision, paras 31, 34. The Appeals Chamber notes that some of these factors were not considered to constitute sufficiently compelling humanitarian grounds per se. It considers however that the Trial Chamber concluded that such humanitarian grounds existed on the basis of the combination of all relevant factors.

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