Karadzic defends 'just cause' at UN trial
Source: Agencies |
March 2, 2010, Tuesday
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WARTIME Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, charged with the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust, testified yesterday that his people defended themselves against Islamic fundamentalists seeking to lay claim to Bosnia during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.
In an opening defense statement at the United Nations war crimes tribunal, Karadzic denied any intention to expel non-Serbs from their homes, and said the Serb objective was to protect their own lives and property.
There was a core of Muslim leaders in Bosnia that was "plotting and conniving," Karadzic told the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the Netherlands. "They wanted Islamic fundamentalism and they wanted it from 1991," he said, seeking to trace the origin of the full-scale civil war to the Muslims' rejection of power-sharing proposals.
"Our cause is just and holy," Karadzic said as he began his two-day statement. "We have a good case. We have good evidence and proof."
Karadzic, 64, faces two counts of genocide and nine other counts of murder, extermination, persecution, forced deportation and the seizing of 200 UN hostages. He faces possible life imprisonment if convicted.
Prosecutors say Karadzic orchestrated a campaign to destroy the Muslim and Croat communities in eastern Bosnia to create an ethnically pure Serbian state. The campaign included the 44-month siege of the capital Sarajevo and the torture and murder of hundreds of prisoners in detention camps, and culminated in the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim males in one horrific week in July 1995 in Srebrenica, the worst bloodbath in Europe since World War II.
Karadzic is the most important figure to be brought to trial since former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who died of a heart attack in 2006 before his case was concluded. Karadzic, president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb state, negotiated with diplomats, UN officials and peace envoys; he appeared often in the media; and he set the tone and pace of the 1992-95 Bosnian war that killed an estimated 100,000 people.
The tribunal, set up in 1993, has indicted 161 political and military officials, of which 40 cases are still continuing. Two men are fugitives and could still be brought to trial in The Hague: Karadzic's former top general, Ratko Mladic, and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.
In an opening defense statement at the United Nations war crimes tribunal, Karadzic denied any intention to expel non-Serbs from their homes, and said the Serb objective was to protect their own lives and property.
There was a core of Muslim leaders in Bosnia that was "plotting and conniving," Karadzic told the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the Netherlands. "They wanted Islamic fundamentalism and they wanted it from 1991," he said, seeking to trace the origin of the full-scale civil war to the Muslims' rejection of power-sharing proposals.
"Our cause is just and holy," Karadzic said as he began his two-day statement. "We have a good case. We have good evidence and proof."
Karadzic, 64, faces two counts of genocide and nine other counts of murder, extermination, persecution, forced deportation and the seizing of 200 UN hostages. He faces possible life imprisonment if convicted.
Prosecutors say Karadzic orchestrated a campaign to destroy the Muslim and Croat communities in eastern Bosnia to create an ethnically pure Serbian state. The campaign included the 44-month siege of the capital Sarajevo and the torture and murder of hundreds of prisoners in detention camps, and culminated in the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim males in one horrific week in July 1995 in Srebrenica, the worst bloodbath in Europe since World War II.
Karadzic is the most important figure to be brought to trial since former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who died of a heart attack in 2006 before his case was concluded. Karadzic, president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb state, negotiated with diplomats, UN officials and peace envoys; he appeared often in the media; and he set the tone and pace of the 1992-95 Bosnian war that killed an estimated 100,000 people.
The tribunal, set up in 1993, has indicted 161 political and military officials, of which 40 cases are still continuing. Two men are fugitives and could still be brought to trial in The Hague: Karadzic's former top general, Ratko Mladic, and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.
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