Karadzic in the dock - UN trial has relevance for us all
He is accused of orchestrating the worst massacre seen in Europe since the end of World War II when, at Srebrenica in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces murdered 8,000 men and boys.
This ethnic cleansing was the violent expulsion, kidnapping, jailing, torture, murder or rape of civilians by those trying to build an ethnically homogeneous state. That it took place during a brutal civil war does not excuse it no more than the acceptance that terrible wrongs were committed by each side in that conflict.
It was as barbaric has anything we have inflicted on our fellow man. It was the atrocities of the Nazis in Poland and Russia made real in our own time and brought into our homes via television.
When the Bosnian war ended in 1995, Karadzic disappeared into the Bosnian Serb community but he was arrested last year when he was discovered practicing as a New Age quack.
On Monday he refused to attend his trial at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He insisted that he needed more time to prepare his defence.
Karadzic refused to leave his cell and the chief judge — the South Korean O-Gon Kwon — had little option but to adjourn the hearing until yesterday.
It seemed as if round one had gone to Karadzic.
The deposed Bosnian Serb leader, like his mentor Slobodan Milosevic, was determined to take control of Europe’s biggest war crimes trial since Nazi leaders stood in the dock in Nuremberg.
Milosevic committed suicide in custody before his trial concluded so his supporters can say he was never convicted of anything. Just like Hermann Göring.
However, when Karadzic absented himself again yesterday morning, Judge O-Gon Kwon opened the trial in his absence. He was right.
Karadzic’s strategy was to intimidate the judges by playing on their fears that the trial might not be perceived as fair in Serbia, driving a wedge between that country and the West just as a new government tries to establish better relationships with Europe.
Karadzic must face the charges made against him. He can choose the terms of how his case is heard but it must be heard. The 8,000 men and boys slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces at Srebrenica were not given the option of walking away, neither can Karadzic.
War tribunals are open to all sorts of accusations. Inevitably they face charges that they represent the justice of the victors imposed on the vanquished. That is why they must be seen to be scrupulously fair and above any accusation of triumphalism.
We may imagine that the functioning of a war crimes tribunal considering atrocities on the very eastern fringes of Europe is of little consequence to any of us living in this stable democracy. That detachment is only possible because such tribunals are seen to work; that they hold the once powerful to account.
Karadzic must face trial for reasons of justice and symbolism too.
This is an issue for us all, not just the families of those murdered at Srebrenica.
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