Karadzic set to face judge

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will face a judge today for the first time over his string of monstrous war crimes.

Karadzic was taken from Serbia and transferred to a UN jail cell in the Hague yesterday morning.

Today will see the first step of his trial on charges of waging genocide against non-Serbs during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Prosecutors have plenty of evidence of atrocities to form their case against Karadzic – from harrowing video of summary executions in Srebrenica, scene of Europe’s worst carnage since the Second World War, to photos of skeletal prisoners peering through barbed wire fences.

However, the tortuous trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the late Serbian despot and one-time Karadzic mentor, demonstrated how tricky it is to prove such crimes were masterminded by political leaders as part of a genocidal plot to carve out an ethnically pure Serb ministate in Bosnia.

On the other hand, Milosevic’s trial may also help the prosecution because the Serb was able to present a forceful case that Karadzic was the one to blame for Bosnian atrocities.

Milosevic – whose death from a heart attack in March 2006 brought his four-year trial to an inconclusive end – argued that he had no direct control over Karadzic and his Bosnian Serb forces who killed tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

“During the Milosevic trial it became really clear that Karadzic was the real architect of genocide,” said Prof Michael Scharf, the director of the Frederick K Cox International Law Centre at Case Western Reserve University.

“The defence made a convincing case that Milosevic was much less culpable than Karadzic.”

Some 10 suspects have been charged with genocide since the UN court was launched in 1993. But only one, General Radislav Krstic, who commanded Serb forces involved in the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, has been found guilty.

An appellate court reduced his original conviction for genocide to aiding and abetting genocide.

On Tuesday, Bosnia’s domestic war crimes court convicted seven Bosnian Serbs of genocide in the Srebrenica massacre and handed down prison sentences ranging from 38 to 42 years. Four others were acquitted.

Judges may never find a smoking gun – such as written orders for Muslims and Croats to be wiped out – that would convict Karadzic of genocide, said Professor Ton Zwaan of Amsterdam University’s Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Karadzic, aged 63, is charged with 11 counts, including genocide and crimes against humanity, for allegedly orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre, the deadly 44-month siege of Sarajevo and brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns.

Speaking to reporters in the tribunal’s lobby, prosecutor Serge Brammertz conceded the case would not be easy, but said his team would draw on evidence already presented in other cases since Karadzic’s original 1995 indictment. They are expected to update the indictment before the trial begins.

“We will ensure that it reflects the current case law, facts already established by the court and evidence collected over the past eight years,” he said.

Mr Brammertz said prosecutors also would call evidence including audio and video tapes and witness statements.

“It will be a complex trial, like other cases before this tribunal,” Mr Brammertz said. “In order to prove these serious crimes, the prosecution will have to present a significant amount of evidence, including the testimony of many witnesses.”

In the past, images played to judges at the tribunal have included footage of Serb forces gunning down unarmed Muslim men in a field near Srebrenica and photos of malnourished inmates at Serb-run camps.

There are fears that, like Milosevic, Karadzic will seek to drag out the trial by bickering with judges and prosecutors and using his defendant’s stand as a soap box for his nationalistic views.

Karadzic’s Belgrade-based lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, has said the former Bosnian Serb leader plans to conduct his own defence but will assemble a team of lawyers to help him – a carbon copy of Milosevic’s strategy.

Mr Vujacic said Karadzic has been preparing his defence during his years in hiding. Like Milosevic, he is expected to portray Serbs as victims of the Balkan conflict and claim his actions were designed to protect his people.

Karadzic was finally taken into UN custody after dawn yesterday, more than a week after he was arrested by Serb security forces while posing as a white-bearded New Age guru.

He was flown from Belgrade in a Serbian government business plane to Rotterdam airport and hustled to the nearby jail – most likely in a Dutch police helicopter that flew into the tribunal’s purpose-built detention unit inside the walls of a Dutch maximum-security prison.

There he will be allowed to mingle – and maybe even play table tennis – with former foes from Croatia who are on trial for atrocities against Serbs in 1995 and with fellow alleged Serb war criminals.

The centre, which has 84 cells, currently has 37 other detainees, all alleged war criminals from the former Yugoslavia. Each cell, measuring 17 by 10 feet, has a shower, toilet, sink and desk.

Cell doors are left open most of the day, except for a brief midday period to allow for a change of the guards. Prisoners may have computers, but are not allowed internet access.

They also receive Dutch, German, Belgian and French television channels, as well as satellite reception in their own language.