Serb Chief Sends Lawyer to Tribunal

In a sudden but fleeting reversal of his long-standing refusal to recognize the U.N.’s Balkans war crimes tribunal, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic sent a lawyer to The Hague to represent him in hearings that opened Thursday.

Karadzic’s rationale for suddenly dispatching a representative to The Hague was not immediately clear. In the past he has ridiculed the tribunal’s work and rejected its jurisdiction.

Whatever the motive, Karadzic’s strategy appeared to backfire Thursday when the tribunal used the unexpected presence of the lawyer, Igor Pantelic of Belgrade, as an opportunity to read the two existing indictments against Karadzic aloud in open court.

The indictments are long, detailed and scathing, and Karadzic has until now claimed that he was never properly served with them.

By the end of the day, Pantelic had turned defiant on behalf of his client, saying that he will not represent Karadzic in The Hague after all.

But the day’s developments left human rights activists buoyant.

“Karadzic is going to be sorry he sent Pantelic,” said Richard Dicker, associate counsel for New York-based Human Rights Watch, who is sitting in at The Hague this week as an observer. “Karadzic can’t say anymore what he was saying yesterday: that he had not received proper notification of the indictment.”

Karadzic and his Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic had previously been indicted on war crimes charges. The tribunal convened Thursday in an attempt by the prosecutors to secure an international warrant for their arrest.

With frustration mounting over Karadzic’s and Mladic’s ability to evade capture, the tribunal’s prosecutors hope that international warrants will obligate governments to move against the two.

Specifically, the prosecutors want to prod North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peace enforcement troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina to go after the pair. The international peacekeepers have until now been steadfast in their unwillingness to mount a hunt for them.

Pantelic’s activities in court Thursday delayed by hours the arrest warrant hearings, which were to have focused on events in the former Bosnian “safe area” of Srebrenica.

Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces last July, and thousands of Bosnian Muslim men are believed to have been killed.

The Pantelic surprise also overshadowed word that the tribunal was handing down 17 new indictments, bringing its total number of indicted war criminals to 74.

Some of the new indictments, charging Bosnian Serb soldiers and police with gang rape, torture and enslavement of Bosnian Muslim women in the city of Foca in 1992, mark the first time that sexual assault has been “diligently investigated for the purpose of prosecution under the rubric of torture . . . as a crime against humanity” the tribunal said in a statement.

But Pantelic stole the limelight by filing a motion, at the opening of the day, to participate in the hearings and to review all evidence accumulated so far by the tribunal.

Giving Pantelic access to this huge body of information would have enabled him to tell Karadzic what evidence the tribunal has against him--without forcing Karadzic first to submit to the jurisdiction of the court.

After deliberating for two hours, the tribunal ruled that Pantelic could participate as a defense lawyer long enough to hear his client’s indictment read.

After that, Presiding Judge Claude Jorda said, Pantelic could sit in the visitors’ gallery, with no special access to documents.

Asked afterward why he stayed to hear the words his client has sought so hard to avoid, Pantelic replied that he had wanted to behave like a courteous professional.

Pantelic added that he had come to The Hague “to see if everything is in accordance with the rules.”

The events in The Hague unfolded as separate efforts intensified in Bosnia-Herzegovina to secure Karadzic’s resignation as the so-called president of the Bosnian Serb republic.

A spokesman for Carl Bildt, the senior civilian in charge of implementing the Bosnia peace plan, said Bildt has a “firm expectation” that Karadzic will soon be “exiting the scene,” but he did not say when.

Under the peace accord reached last fall, Karadzic, as an indicted war crimes suspect, is prohibited from holding public office. So far, he has refused to step down.

Walsh reported from The Hague and Murphy from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.