Ratko Mladic, extradited by Serbia to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague to face genocide charges, is ill with cancer, the Belgrade daily Blic said quoting a lawyer, DPA reported.
According to Mladic attorney Milos Saljic, the wartime Bosnian Serb military chief was secretly treated for a Hodgkin's lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes, at a Belgrade clinic in 2009.
He reportedly underwent abdominal surgery and chemotherapy, he said, citing medical forms.
But a spokesman for the Serbian war prosecutor's office, Bruino Vekaric, said that the documents were a forgery. In his words it was the strategy of the defence team to insist on Mladic's health issues.
Saljic had filed an appeal against Mladic's extradition saying that he was too ill to stand trial. The layer even said that he did not believe Mladic, 69, would last until the start of his trial.
Mladic did appear frail in the few photographs of him that were made available since his arrest a week ago. A Serbian government medical team however cleared him for the extradition and trial.