Radovan Karadzic sanctioned the shelling of Sarajevo civilians and the massacre of Srebrenica’s Muslims, the prosecutor said as the Bosnian-Serb leader’s genocide trial resumed in his absence on Monday.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was told that Karadzic personally directed ”a campaign of terror” against Sarejevo and ordered the Srebrenica massacre.
”The accused knew throughout the course of the 44-month siege that his forces were shelling and sniping at civilians and creating conditions of terror for the citizens of Sarajevo,” prosecutor Alan Tieger said on the third day of the trial boycotted by Karadzic.
”For 44 months Radovan Karadzic directed a campaign of terror against a civilian population who were targeted for living in the capital of a multi-ethnic country that he sought to ethnically separate,” he said.
Karadzic (64) faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1992 to 1995 Bosnian war that claimed about 100 000 lives and caused another 2,2-million people to flee their homes.
Charges against him include the siege of Sarajevo, which ended in November 1995 after about 10 000 people, many of them civilians, were killed.
”The ongoing attack on civilians who were already rendered vulnerable by privation and isolation was designed to terrorise them, an intent made more obvious every day,” Tieger said.
In the first two weeks of 1994, United Nations military observers recorded more than 6 600 shells targeted at Sarajevo, the prosecutor added.
Arrested on a Belgrade bus in July 2008 after 13 years on the run, Karadzic is also charged with responsibility for the massacre of more than 7 000 Muslim men and boys at the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 — an event Tieger described as ”one of humanity’s dark chapters”.
”Radovan Karadzic ordered the operation against Srebrenica, which was a culmination of his efforts to cleanse eastern Bosnia … to ensure the Serb state that he envisioned,” the prosecutor said.
”He covered up the mass expulsions and the murders and continues to do so to this day, and the only regret he had of the entire operation was that some Muslim men got away.”
Karadzic denies all the charges, which could put him in jail for life.
He continued his boycott of the trial on Monday to insist on more time to prepare his defence, which he is conducting himself.
”The trial chamber considers Mr Karadzic’s absence as the voluntary waiver of his right to attend the trial and therefore the chamber will continue hearing the prosecution’s opening statement,” ruled presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon.
Karadzic announced in a letter made public by the tribunal earlier that he would be present on Tuesday for a special, procedural hearing to determine how to proceed with his trial in the face of his continued defiance. — AFP
