Former Bosnian Serb president Ms Biljana Plavsic pleaded not guilty to war crimes including genocide at the United Nations tribunal today.
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Ms Biljana Plavsic
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Ms Plavsic, the first woman publicly indicted by the tribunal and the second key figure from the former Bosnian Serb leadership to come to The Hague, pleaded not guilty to all nine war crimes counts.
"I have received the indictment yesterday. I understood it fully and I plead not guilty to all counts on the indictment," the biologist told the court.
The 70-year-old Ms Plavsic answered not guilty to each count as Judge Richard May read them out.
During the 1992-95 Bosnian war she was deputy to Bosnian Serb leader Dr Radovan Karadzic. She took over from him when he was forced from office in 1996.
The indictment says Ms Plavsic, together with other members of the Serbian Democratic Party, served on the war presidency of the Bosnian Serb republic and from July 1991 to December 1992 planned or ordered the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Croats.
The indictment details a huge catalogue of events in which non-Serbs were executed, tortured and detained in inhuman conditions as the brutal purge intensified. Reuters