Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04karadzic.html
November 4, 2009
Karadzic Makes Appearance in Court
By MARLISE SIMONS and JACK HEALY [Netherlands] [Hague] [various war tribunals] [the Bosnia war crimes tribunals] [Mr. Karadzic, captured in 2008?] [followup] [*]
PARIS —The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic made his first appearance at his trial on Tuesday to argue that he needed more time to prepare his defense against charges of genocide.
The videocast from the courtroom showed him taking his seat in the dock, dressed in a dark suit and saying that he had not been given enough time to pore over the reams of documents and hours of audio testimony from witnesses.
Mr. Karadzic, who is defending himself, suggested he would continue to sit out his trial, which began with prosecutors laying out their case last week. [*]
“I in no way wish to boycott this process,” he said though a translator. But, he added, “I cannot take part in something that has been bad from the start, and where my fundamental rights have been violated.”
The war-crimes tribunal in the Hague is discussing how to proceed if Mr. Karadzic keeps defying the tribunal and saying he is not ready for his trial.
Mr. Karadzic’s stance remains that the timing of his appearance is up to him. “I am continuing to work hard to prepare for my trial and look forward to making my own opening statement as soon as I am in a position to do so,” Mr. Karadzic wrote in a letter to the chief judge, which was released Monday. [*]
Over the first days of the trial, prosecutors have been laying out their case that Mr. Karadzic, who spent 11 years as a fugitive, committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. [as his own lawyer, he needs to hear the prosecution’s case] [so expect him later to say he needs extra time to read the transcripts, etc., in order to prepare his cross examination] [*]
The prosecution plans to begin presenting its evidence against him on Wednesday, with testimony from two witnesses. [*]
But if Mr. Karadzic decides to boycott his trial further, the damage could be profound.
On his side, if court lawyers are assigned to him, he might lose his desired platform to tell his own version of the war years. But the tribunal would also lose much time, because new court-appointed lawyers would require months to prepare. [*]
Peter Robinson, a legal adviser to Mr. Karadzic, said by telephone that he would refuse such an appointment and “would not want to be used as a tool” against Mr. Karadzic’s wishes.
Over what is expected to be 30 months of proceedings in Mr. Karadzic’s case, the prosecutors will focus on linking him to the episodes outlined in the charges.
They argue that Mr. Karadzic was the undisputed Bosnian Serb wartime leader and that he made crucial political decisions and had command over the local government, the police and the military during the war. They say he instigated, ordered, sanctioned or knew of the crimes. [it certainly appeared that way in the West] [but I would suggest that the West’s media coverage was quite biased] [I’m not aplogist for Serbs but even when it was one of the other groups casing problems (in Bosnia or Kosovo, in Croatia and Slovenia, …) the West could not slam the Serbs enough] [*]
The prosecution holds Mr. Karadzic accountable for what it calls four distinct criminal enterprises: the ethnic cleansing campaign in eastern Bosnia, in which hundreds of thousands of people were driven from their homes; the 44-month siege of Sarajevo during which more than 10,000 were killed; the execution of more than 7,000 men and boys at Srebrenica; and the taking of more than 200 United Nations peacekeepers hostage.
Alan Tieger, who is an American and the lead prosecutor, has cited Mr. Karadzic’s own words, drawn from public speeches, telephone intercepts and video clips, as he prepared his followers for war or urged them to keep on fighting. Mr. Tieger painted a picture not of a civil war that broke out in the heat of confrontations, as is often claimed, but one that was carefully planned, with the backing of the Serbian government, to replace Bosnia’s multiethnic state with a Serbs-only one. [my own view is that Serbia did most of the stuff with which it’s been charged] [it’s just that the others were doing despicable things as well and Serbs took 80-90 of the blame in western media] [*]
One phone tap from 1991, in advance of the war, recorded Mr. Karadzic as saying that there were “20,000 armed Serbs” already around the city of Sarajevo. “It will be a black caldron where 300,000 Muslims will die,” Mr. Karadzic went on, according to Mr. Tieger’s argument in court on Monday. “They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth.” [it sort of like the classic. Imagine some resident of Washington. He’s walking downtown. A “foreigner” comes up to the local and asks: which way (can you tell me how to walk to the White House?)?] [now, was he simply asking for directions? Or was he interrogating me on classified White House business?] [answer: from the information it cannot be determined] you need more context] [was Karadzic lamenting their eventual deaths or celbrating?] [*]
In another recorded telephone call, an associate of Mr. Karadzic asked about Europe’s reaction to a coming military campaign, to which Mr. Karadzic replied, according to the prosecutor, “Europe will be told to go [expletive] itself and not to come back until the job is finished.”
“The job,” Mr. Tieger said, started in 1992 as 70,000 Bosnian Serb and Serb volunteers and paramilitary units were recruited and armed. Aided by the military and the police, they swept through dozens of towns and villages, looting, killing and driving tens of thousands of non-Serbs from their homes. Many of the non-Serbs fled; others were locked up in dozens of detention camps, starved, tortured or raped, he said.
“Ethnic cleansing does not appear the consequence of the war, but rather its goal,” Mr. Tieger said.
The panel of four international judges trying the case allowed prosecutors to present their opening statement in the absence of Mr. Karadzic, or a legal representative, because the two-day summary serves as an overview of the prosecution case and does not count as evidence.
Marlise Simons reported from Paris and Jack Healy from New York.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company