In the Proposed Indictment, Mladic is still charged only with crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and there is no mention of the war crimes of which he is accused in the war in Croatia, when he was the commander of the Yugoslav army's 9th Knin Corps.

The Proposed Indictment "largely conforms to the scope and structure of the indictment" in the tribunal's case against Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic, and "would allow for a possible joinder of the case against" Mladic with the case against Karadzic, "which would enhance the overall efficiency of proceedings before the Tribunal."

The number of counts is reduced from 15 in the Operative Indictment to 11 in the Proposed Indictment, including two counts of genocide and the removal of the charge of complicity in genocide.

The tribunal's decision, signed by Judge Alphons Orie, a member of the trial chamber assigned to the Mladic case, allows prosecutors to submit an indictment with the proposed amendments, with the assessment that the evidence is satisfactory and supports the likely conviction of the accused if it is accepted.

The removed count refers to an incident in the municipalities of Bisina and Sekovici where more than 30 Bosniak men were killed, some of whom had been detained in the Susica prison, which Judge Orie would not include in the Proposed Indictment due to insufficient evidence.

The Proposed Indictment contains four main amendments related to the prosecution's wish "to update, clarify, and further particularize its allegations relating to the Accused's individual responsibility," to "minor changes" to the criminal conduct underpinning the charges in the Operative Indictment, to "restructure and reduce the number of counts and legally re-characterize certain underlying criminal conduct contained in the Operative Indictment" and to "provide more precise notice of the underlying criminal conduct alleged," notably in factual pleadings.

The Proposed Indictment proposes several changes related to the single Joint Criminal Enterprise by distinguishing four separate joint criminal enterprises corresponding to the four "crime bases" in the Operative Indictment. The Prosecution submits that Mladic "acted in concert with different people at different times, in pursuit of four distinct, but related, criminal objectives."

Changes to the criminal conduct "relate to the scope of the crime base." The Prosecution proposes to remove six municipalities from the existing indictment and to replace them with six other municipalities.

The Prosecution wants to reduce the number of counts from 15 to 11. The counts which are to be removed relate to the Sarajevo crime base. "The Prosecution further proposes to particularize the crime of genocide, which in the Operative Indictment is charged under a single count. The Prosecution proposes to divide this crime into two separate counts, each representing distinct time periods and locations in which genocide is alleged to have occurred, thereby also removing the charge of complicity in genocide."

The Operative Indictment charges Mladic with genocide for the slaughter of 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica in July 1995. The Tribunal's decision does not specify the crime for the second genocide count. The second crime basis in the Operative Indictment is the three-year siege of Sarajevo, during which 10,000 civilians were killed.

In the fourth amendment, to "provide more precise notice of the underlying criminal conduct alleged... the Prosecution submits a more extensive list of locations relating to incidents for the Sarajevo and Srebrenica crime bases."

The Prosecution has seven days to submit the amended indictment against Mladic.