NEWS ARCHIVE

Briefing: Karadzic Trial

23/11/2009 - Radovan Karadzic, the wartime president of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s ethnic Serbs, is accused by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of orchestrating a 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during which some 10,000 people were killed, and the slaughter of around 8,000 Bosniak men and boys captured in the UN protected area of Srebrenica in July 1995. After more than a decade on the run, spent in Serbia under the assumed identity of a psychic healer, the world's most wanted fugitive was finally captured in July 2008 and transferred to the ICTY.

Karadzic’s trial was scheduled to start on 26 October 2009, but was delayed by one day following his refusal to attend. A few days prior to the start date, Karadzic sent a letter to the court announcing his intention to boycott the proceedings in protest at its decision to deny him additional time of 10 months to prepare his defence. He complained that he was being "buried under tons of pages of legal documents" and compared himself with victims of staged trials in Nazi Germany. Karadzic has elected to conduct his own defence.

On 27 October, when Karadzic again failed to appear at court, the judges decided to begin proceedings without him. The prosecution’s opening statement was delivered, but further stages have been postponed due to the absence of the accused.

At a status conference held at the beginning of November, which Karadzic did attend, the court warned that, while it did not deny him his right to defend himself, it would, in the interests of justice, impose an ex-officio defender to take over Karadzic’s defence should he again fail to appear or obstruct the progress of the trial in any other way. In order to give the appointed defender adequate time to prepare for this role, the court was forced to potpone the trial until March 2010. On 20 November, the ICTY Registry appointed British lawyer Richard Harvey to this role.

On the morning of 26 October, when the trial was scheduled to start, members of several associations of victims from Bosnia-Herzegovina arrived in The Hague, having traveled more than 30 hours by bus, to protest in front of the ICTY for justice and to remind the world of the crimes Karadzic is accused of committing.

Impunity Watch joined the victims groups in their protest, supporting their demands for justice. Their members were clearly deeply disappointed by the decision to postpone the trial and the accused’s failure to appear, developments which in their eyes represent a serious limitation of the court’s ability to deliver justice. For them, the prosecution’s opening statements were deprived of their meaning by the accused’s absence during their reading.

Impunity Watch is satisfied with the court’s decision to prevent further disruption of the trial by Karadzic and to continue with the proceedings, particularly the safeguard measure of preparing an ex-officio defender to assume his defence in the event of a continued boycott. It also stresses the importance of this trial in the quest for justice and accountability for the crimes committed between 1992-5 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the need to support this by recognising and remembering the experiences of conflict victims from the entire region of the former Yugoslavia.