Karadzic faces new charge sheet

United Nations prosecutors plan to file a new indictment against Radovan Karadzic within days to update the eight-year-old charges against the former Bosnian Serb leader.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger told a Yugoslav war crimes tribunal hearing at The Hague in the Netherlands yesterday that he would file a motion seeking permission to update Karadzic’s 11-count indictment by Monday at the latest.

Mr Tieger did not indicate whether the new indictment would include more or fewer charges than the current 25-page indictment.

Once they get Mr Tieger’s motion and the proposed new indictment, judges will have to consider whether to approve it and Karadzic will have to enter pleas to any new charges it contains.

Karadzic, 63, faces genocide charges for allegedly masterminding atrocities, including the slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995 and the deadly siege of Sarajevo, when he was president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb republic.

Judge Iain Bonomy registered not guilty pleas to the 11 charges last month after Karadzic twice refused to enter pleas.

At yesterday’s hour-long hearing Karadzic said he had launched an investigation to back his claim that he was promised immunity from prosecution in return for disappearing from the public eye in a 1996 deal with US peace envoy Richard Holbrooke – a claim Mr Holbrooke has repeatedly denied.

Karadzic said that when tribunal officials blocked attempts to shield him from prosecution Nato tried to kill him.

“I have irrefutable evidence that Nato tried to liquidate me,” he told Judge Bonomy.

Judge Bonomy told Karadzic that he and two other judges were already studying three separate motions Karadzic had filed linked to his claimed immunity deal with Mr Holbrooke and they would issue a ruling soon.

But he warned Karadzic that there were serious questions about Mr Holbrooke’s authority to even offer such a deal.

Judges will have to consider whether an immunity offer “ought to have, or could have, any influence on the work of an independent tribunal”, Judge Bonomy said.

Karadzic, wearing a dark suit, tie and reading glasses, looked healthier and less tired than at his first two appearances before the tribunal and he was polite to Judge Bonomy.

Karadzic was arrested on a Belgrade bus in late July after 13 years on the run. At the time, he was disguised with flowing white hair and a bushy beard and working as a new age healer under the assumed name of Dr Dragan Dabic.

Yesterday he again insisted he would conduct his own defence, although he said he might have a legal adviser in court with him.

“This either has to be a fair trial or no trial at all. I have to hold the reins of my defence in my own hands,” he told Judge Bonomy.

The court is under pressure from the UN Security Council to complete its cases and close its doors by 2010. Karadzic’s capture and looming trial mean the tribunal is sure to miss that deadline.

Prosecutors have indicted 161 suspects on war crimes charges and convicted 57. Only two indicted suspects remain on the run – Karadzic’s former military chief, General Ratko Mladic, and a one-time leader of Serbs in Croatia, Goran Hadzic.