The trial of Radovan Karadzic is scheduled to start on Monday at the Intentional Criminal Tribunal in The Hague (ICTY), some 15 months after he was captured.The former Bosnian Serb leader faces charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s.
Authorities said the case would proceed even though Karadzic – who is representing himself – said he would boycott the trail. Karadzic, who avoided capture for 13 years after the war, has been trying to delay the start of the trial at the United Nations' court. He said he needs months more to prepare.
The trial presents a big challenge for the international justice authorities and for the countries of the former Yugoslavia. It comes after the failure of the proceedings against the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. That trail dragged on for four years before Milosevic died in his prison cell in 2006 of a heart attack before the hearing ended..
"After the death of Slobodan Milosevic, the question was raised whether the ICTY would one day be able to try the people carrying the responsibility for the crimes at the highest political level," said Alain Werner, a Swiss lawyer who worked as a prosecutor during the former Liberian president Charles Taylor's ongoing trial.
"This opportunity exists today and it seems that the prosecutors have decided to concentrate the trial on the main facts."
The prosecution has put together more than one million pages of documents and is expected to call upon 409 witnesses. The hearing is expected to last more than two years.
Heading the team is Alan Tieger, an American, who will be aiming to show that Karadzic "participated in a criminal enterprise" with, notably, Milosevic, "to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Croats from the territories claimed by the Serbians".
« An efficient prosecution should allow us to better understand what happened at a high political level. » Alain Werner, lawyer Massacre
For this aim, Karadzic is charged with planning and orchestrating the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, as well as the 44 months of the Siege of Sarajevo and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"Some of the prosecutors in charge of this case, such as Tieger, are very competent and have experience gained from several trials at the same court," said Werner.
"This could contribute to an efficient prosecution, which should allow us to better understand what happened at a high political level."
For his part, the former Bosnian Serb leader – who was caught in Serbia after 13 years on the run in July 2008 during which he had disguised himself as a doctor of alternative medicine – has developed a two-pronged strategy.
Alleged deal
First, Karadzic claims he was betrayed by the US negotiator in the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke, whom he says promised him impunity in 1996 in exchange for his withdrawal from political life in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In mid October, he asked the UN Security Council to uphold this claim. Holbrooke has always denied any deal.
The second part concerns the prosecution's charges. Karadzic maintains that he was undertaking "resistance" in Bosnia. In numerous petitions, he has said that he was fighting "against the creation of an Islamic state in the centre of Europe".
His defence team, made up of around 20 lawyers and international law professors and led by the American lawyer Peter Robinson, have asked 27 countries to open up their secret archives. This includes the US, Britain, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Bosnia and Croatia.
Karadzic claims UN soldiers organised arms trafficking to Bosnia-Herzegovina which would have violated the UN embargo.
Victims' voiceAround 100,000 people died and thousands disappeared during the Bosnian war.
"Even if the victims are not represented by the lawyers in the trial, as it is the case for the court trying the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, you can be sure that they will be following the trial closely," Werner said.
"One cannot generalise, but my experience of international jurisdictions tells me that the fact that a court has judged their testimonies of suffering as authentic and trustworthy is often of great importance."
The verdict will be delivered by three judges – a south Korean, a Briton and a Trinidadian – but is not expected before 2013. Karadzic could expect a life sentence.
Stéphanie Maupas in The Hague, swissinfo.ch (Adapted from French by Isobel Leybold-Johnson)
