Eurasia Press & News
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic will again boycott his genocide trial when it resumes at a UN tribunal in The Hague next week, one of his legal advisers said Wednesday.
“He will not attend Monday,” Marco Sladojevic said after a meeting with the 64-year-old Karadzic.
Karadzic, who is defending himself, failed to appear at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Monday and Tuesday, arguing he needs more time to prepare his case.
The former Bosnian Serb leader is charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1992-95 war in which 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million forced from their homes.
Sladojevic said Karadzic “would most probably attend” a scheduled hearing on November 3 but only if it deals with procedural matters.
“He hopes that the judge will clarify (this),” he added.
Judge O-Gon Kwon, who is presiding over the UN tribunal, said Tuesday if Karadzic did not appear in court next week then the case may go ahead in his absence.
Karadzic, whose trial is expected to last two years, is accused of having “participated in an overarching joint criminal enterprise to permanently remove Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat inhabitants from the territories of Bosnia-Hercegovina claimed as Bosnian Serb territory,” according to the charge sheet.
Key among the charges is the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995, as well as the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that ended in November 1995.
He is alleged to have worked with Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died midway through his own UN genocide trial in March 2006.
Karadzic’s former military commander, Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, is still on the run.
