Karadzic: 'I'm the victim of a US witch hunt'

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic claims he is the victim of a media witch hunt that will prevent him from getting a fair trial.

Karadzic filed his complaint with the Hague tribunal where he will face genocide and other charges after his first appearance there yesterday.

He has declined to enter a plea to the 11 charges against him.

The claims, which emerged today, say a witch hunt atmosphere surrounds his trial and that it is fuelled by the US.

He said US negotiator Richard Holbrooke reneged on a deal to have the charges withdrawn in return for him leaving politics. Mr Holbroke denies any arrangement was made.

In a four-page document submitted to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Karadzic said his arrest had been “accompanied by many drastic irregularities”.

“The first irregularity I would mention is the media witch-hunt which began in the Muslim media even before the beginning of the armed conflict and which proclaimed me a war criminal at a time when the only victims were Serbs,” he said.

He added: “It is now unimaginable to many people that this court could acquit me.

“I believe that this fact seriously jeopardises the trial itself.”

During yesterday’s hearing the judge cut him off when he began speaking about the supposed deal with Mr Holbrooke in 1996, a year after he was charged by the UN court in The Hague.

The judge said the court would hear those complaints at the right time, but “the appropriate moment is not now.”

In today’s document Karadzic says the United States was intent on silencing him.

He said he still feared for his life, even in the UN detention centre where he will stay for the duration of his trial.

“I do not know how long the arm of Mr. Holbrooke is ... or whether that arm can reach me here,” he wrote.

Mr Holbrooke denied Karadzic’s account and said: “He’s one of the greatest mass murderers of the world and he’s putting this out in order to defend himself. It’s an invented story and no one ought to believe it.”

“What I said was, ’If anyone deserves the death penalty, it’s Karadzic and Mladic,’ ” he said, referring to Karadzic’s top military commander Ratko Mladic, who is still a fugitive.

“That was my specific reference and if Karadzic is in The Hague and is still scared that I have an arm that long, I guess I should treat it in a backhanded way as a compliment.”

Karadzic is accused of atrocities including the massacre in Srebrenica of 8,000 Muslim men and boys and the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 dead during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.