Karadžić case to proceed March 1

The trail of former Republic of Srpska president Radovan Karadžić will restart on March 1, according to presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon.

The decision for continuing the process was also an answer to the verbal demand of Karadžić, who is defending himself, to postpone the trial again, claiming that he has not had enough tie to prepare his defense.

“Time is the worst enemy of the defense,” Karadžić said, adding that the “conditions have worsened with 300,000 new pages of documentation,” which neither he nor his colleagues have gotten to analyze, because they were working on the previous 1.5 million pages.

Kwon said that if the defendant wants to ask for a postponement, he must submit a written request as soon as possible.

Karadžić will have two days, March 1-2, to give his opening statement.

The prosecution had two days as well for its opening statements in October of last year, before the trial was postponed.

The prosecution will introduce its first witness on March 3. The prosecution must submit its list of witnesses for March and April in February.

The trial chamber stated that there will be a meeting on February 15 of officials from countries that according to Karadžić’s demands, have not given all needed documentation to the defense.

Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Iran, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina still must submit all of the documentation that was asked of them.

Since Karadžić protested the naming of British lawyer Richard Harvey as his assistant defense attorney, Harvey watched the last hearing from the gallery.

The trial stopped in November of last year, after the prosecution gave its opening statements, when Karadžić refused to come to the courtroom from his cell and attend the trial as his own defense attorney.

This is when Harvey was put on his case, who will take over the defense case if Karadžić continues to obstruct the proceedings.