Trial of Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic inches toward conclusion

The slow-turning wheels of justice in the case against Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic creaked toward a milestone Monday when the prosecutor in his war crimes trial called for a life sentence for the psychologist-turned-politician accused of genocide.

Karadzic, 69, already has been on trial for five years and a verdict isn’t expected until next summer on the war crimes charges stemming from the Yugoslav conflicts more than two decades ago.

But closing arguments that began Monday recapped the United Nations tribunal’s case against the accused architect of “ethnic cleansing” in the 1992-95 conflict that left 100,000 dead and drove more than 2 million from their homes.

Karadzic, who didn’t take the stand to defend himself during the evidence phase of the trial that began in 2009, is expected to make his own closing arguments Wednesday or Thursday, according to the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military leader Gen. Ratko Mladic, who is also on trial at the court in The Hague, are accused of conspiring with Serbian nationalist strongman Slobodan Milosevic to create an ethnically pure Bosnian Serb state after the 1991 breakup of Yugoslavia led to the secession of multiethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina.

All three Serb leaders were indicted on war crimes charges including genocide in 1995 but remained at large for years, protected by loyal Serbian nationalists in the chaotic aftermath of the fighting quelled by the Dayton peace accords that year.

Karadzic was finally detained in Belgrade in July 2008 and extradited to The Hague to face 11 criminal charges, the most damning stemming from his alleged order to Mladic’s forces to massacre Muslim men and boys in the U.N.-protected town of Srebrenica. As many as 8,000 Muslims were executed by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995 in the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

The prosecution wrapped up its case against Karadzic in May 2012 after calling 195 witnesses to testify, the war crimes court reported in its announcement last week of closing arguments. The defense case was presented over 18 months ending in May of this year after 238 witnesses were called.

Karadzic, who during the war boasted of his success in ousting Muslims and Croats from what Serbs claimed as their historic lands, has denied throughout his trial being in charge of the brutal campaign of “ethnic cleansing.”

In his closing arguments Monday, prosecutor Alan Tieger called the rumpled, white-haired defendant a liar.

“The policy of ethnic cleansing has been fully exposed, as has Dr. Karadzic as its driving force,” Tieger told the court in remarks recorded and relayed to a press gallery. He pointed to the hundreds of witnesses, 80,000 pages of transcripts and 10,000 exhibits as irrefutable proof that Karadzic directed the war crimes with which he is charged.

Karadzic declined to enter a plea and has denounced the U.N. tribunal as a tool of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S.-led military alliance that patrolled Bosnia in the first years after the Dayton peace accords brokered by late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke.

In Bosnia, Karadzic’s daughter, Sonja Karadzic-Jovicevic, told the Associated Press that “if the Hague tribunal were not just an emissary of the NATO alliance, he would be released.”

Karadzic has refused court-appointed counsel and has been acting as his own lawyer through most of the trial. Peter Robinson, his standby attorney, told the BBC in The Hague that Wednesday would be the defendant’s last chance to convince the court of his innocence.

A spokeswoman for the Mothers of Srebrenica, representing survivors of the massacred Muslim men, told the British broadcaster that she was confident the war crimes court would find Karadzic guilty on all counts.

“We expect that the criminal Karadzic will get a life sentence, that he will be found guilty not only of the genocide of Srebrenica but also the genocide in other cities of Bosnia,” said Munira Subasic.

Mladic also remains on trial, although proceedings have been suspended for more than two years by legal challenges. The once-formidable warlord, now 72 and reportedly ailing, appeared in court on a summons to testify in Karadzic’s trial in January but refused, calling the tribunal a “satanic court.”

Milosevic died at the tribunal prison in 2006 before the court was able to render a judgment in the genocide case brought against the alleged mastermind of the bloody Yugoslav ethnic conflicts.

Follow @cjwilliamslat for the latest international news 24/7