Radovan Karadzic goes before a judge at a United Nations court in The Hague on Friday to plead guilty or not guilty to ordering a host of war crimes, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The former Bosnian Serb political leader is to answer nine of the 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity brought against him by prosecutors from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The 63-year-old, dubbed the ”Butcher of Bosnia” by some media, was sensationally arrested six weeks ago on a Belgrade bus posing as a doctor of alternative medicine — complete with large glasses and big white beard.
It was a very different looking Karadzic who made his first appearance at The Hague tribunal on July 31.
Shorn of the beard and long hair used to disguise himself as Doctor Dragan Dabic, he was again recognisable as the man who became one of the most reviled figures of the 1992 to 1995 Bosnia war — though older, thinner and paler.
In his submissions to the court so far, Karadzic has challenged the legality of his pending genocide trial and urged the UN court to order evidence from former US diplomat Richard Holbrooke about an alleged secret deal.
Declining to enter a plea immediately, he claimed Holbrooke had promised him at the end of Bosnia’s bloody war that he would not face prosecution if he disappeared from the public eye.
But Holbrooke, the architect of the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war, denied cutting such a deal and described Karadzic as the ”intellectual architect” behind an ideology of racial hatred in the former Yugoslavia.
”Of all the evil men of the Balkans, he is the worst,” he said.
Massacre
Karadzic is accused of commanding the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10 000 dead, and of ordering the July 1995 massacre of about 8 000 Muslim men and boys in the UN-protected area of Srebrenica.
Karadzic, who has signalled his intention to conduct his own defence, will be asked by the judge on Friday to give his plea on nine of those counts.
If he pleads ”not guilty” a trial is not expected to start for months. In the unlikely event that he pleads ”guilty”, proceedings would move straight to sentencing. If he refuses to reply, the judge will automatically register him as having pleaded ”not guilty”.
While a ”not guilty” plea is expected, there has been much suspense in the lead-up to this second appearance about what Karadzic might say at the hearing, perhaps about his life on the run or how he expects to defend himself.
Experts believe he will exploit tactics already used by late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic at his UN trial and try to embarrass the United States over alleged back-room deals.
They say that like Milosevic, whose own ICTY trial ended after four years with his death in March 2006, Karadzic would seek to call people like Holbrooke and the former leaders of the US, France and Britain as witnesses.
His appearance will engender the strongest of emotions from both his supporters and those want him punished for the atrocities they think he committed.
When he was transferred to The Hague there were violent demonstrations against the move in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. More than 70 people were injured, one of them later dying in hospital.
Kada Hotic, who lost her son and husband as Karadzic’s Serb troops overran the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica and massacred men and boys, will be hoping it is more business-like than his first appearance.
”He stole the ground from under our feet and he took the sky from above our heads, he killed our sons,” Hotic said after watching the hearing on television.
”And what we get in return is a theatre performance. The world is looking at this as if it were a spectacle,” she added.
If convicted, Karadzic faces life imprisonment. — AFP
