Trial to start in Hague without accused Karadzic

RADOVAN KARADZIC has said he will boycott the start of his long awaited trial on Monday when the former Bosnian Serb leader is due to face charges of genocide and other war crimes.

Mr Karadzic (64) told the United Nations court at The Hague that he was not ready to begin his defence against 11 counts relating to crimes allegedly committed during Bosnia’s 1992-5 war, when he was the political leader of Bosnian Serbs, whose military chief, Ratko Mladic, is still on the run.

The charges against both men centre on their alleged roles in the massacre of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, and the brutal 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, when Serb shelling and sniper fire killed thousands of civilians.

“The biggest, most complex, important and sensitive case ever before this tribunal is about to begin without proper preparation,” Mr Karadzic wrote in a letter to judges at the UN court.

“I hereby inform you that my defence is not ready for my trial . . . and that therefore I shall not appear before you on that date.”

Mr Karadzic, who was arrested in July 2008 while living as a new age healer in the Serb capital, Belgrade, bemoaned “unequal, disproportionate and unjust circumstances” in preparing to defend himself in court.

“No lawyer in this world could prepare a defence within this period of time,” he wrote.

In the face of complaints from relatives of many of the 100,000 killed in the Bosnian war, the court has sought to restrict the number of charges faced by Mr Karadzic to avoid a repeat of the grinding, four-year trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. He died in a UN jail cell in 2006 before the court could reach a verdict in his case.

But the tribunal now faces something of a dilemma over how to handle Mr Karadzic’s trial: either begin without him in court and face Serb accusations of unfairness, appoint a lawyer whom Mr Karadzic may well reject or wait until he declares himself ready to mount a legal defence and risk an interminable delay.

“At the moment there is no indication that the procedure will not go ahead as scheduled. The control of court proceedings is entirely in the hands of the tribunal’s judges,” court spokesperson Nerma Jelacic said in a statement.

The prosecution team insisted that Mr Karadzic’s rights had been respected and that he had been given ample time to prepare his case.

“It will be up to the judges to decide what to do, but as indicated earlier the prosecution is ready to proceed with the trial and it will take place. If it is not on Monday it will be at a later date,” said prosecution spokeswoman Olga Kavran.

The court has already thrown out Mr Karadzic’s claim that he should be given immunity from prosecution, which he alleged was promised to him at the end of the war by senior US diplomat Richard Holbrooke in return for his agreeing to withdraw from public life.

A senior ally of Mr Karadzic during the war – and his successor as Bosnian Serb president after it ended – will be released early from a Swedish jail next Tuesday.

Biljana Plavsic (79) was given an 11-year sentence by the UN court in February 2003 for playing a leading role in the wartime persecution of Muslims and Croats. Officials say she has expressed remorse for her crimes and behaved well while incarcerated, but many Bosnian Muslims are furious at her early release.