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Radovan Karadzic: I should be praised for peace efforts Radovan Karadzic: I should be praised for peace efforts
(about 3 hours later)
The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is on trial over his role in some of the worst atrocities in Europe since the second world war, has begun his defence by saying that far from being accused, he should be praised for his efforts to promote peace. Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader on trial for his alleged role in the siege of Sarajevo and the murder of 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica, opened his defence claiming he should be praised as a "peacemaker."
Karadzic is one of a trio of Serb leaders brought to trial in The Hague for war crimes during the violent break-up of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1999, in which well over 100,000 people were killed and millions were displaced. Wearing a grey suit and a blue-striped tie, Karadzic, switching from Serbo-Croat to English and back, told The Hague war crimes tribunal: "Sarajevo is my city, and any story that we would shell Sarajevo without any reason is untrue."
Prosecutors at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have accused him of responsibility for the shelling of Sarajevo when the Bosnian capital was under siege by Bosnian Serb forces from 1992 to 1996. Outlining his case as he called his first witness, the 67-year-old made clear he would be claiming – as other Serb officials have unsuccessfully tried to do before him – that the Bosnian government were the aggressors in the war, shelling and sniping at their own civilians.
He is also charged with being behind the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. "Instead of being accused, I should have been rewarded for all the good things I have done. I did everything in human power to avoid the war. I succeeded in reducing the suffering of all civilians," he told the court at the start of his defence.
"Instead of being accused, I should have been rewarded for all the good things I have done. I did everything in human power to avoid the war. I succeeded in reducing the suffering of all civilians," he told the court.
"I proclaimed numerous unilateral ceasefires and military containment. And I stopped our army many times when they were close to victory.""I proclaimed numerous unilateral ceasefires and military containment. And I stopped our army many times when they were close to victory."
Karadzic, 67, is defending himself against charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and will cross-examine witnesses himself. Karadzic, a former psychiatrist, is on trial over alleged war crimes committed during the Bosnian war from 1992-1995 in which well over 100,000 people were killed and millions displaced.
Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic went on trial this year, and former Yugoslav and Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died in 2006 before the end of his trial. Conducting his own defence, he added that Muslims had faked two shellings of a marketplace in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, during a siege by Serb forces in which more than 100 people were killed.
He was finally arrested in 2008, after years spent in hiding, living in Belgrade in the guise of a new age health guru.
Fiddling occasionally with his rimless glasses, Karadzic called as his first witness the former Russian chief of staff of the UN military mission's Sarajevo sector Colonel Andrei Demorenko who also provided a witness statement in a previous trial.
Echoing the claims of previous Serb defendants, Demorenko suggested a conspiracy existed among western UN officials, foreign journalists and the Bosnian government and its forces to demonise Serb forces and paint them as the aggressors.
At the centre of the first day's evidence offered by the defence was Karadzic and Demorenko's claim that the shelling of the Markale maketplace in February 1994, in which 68 people were killed and 144 were injured, was orchestrated by Bosnian forces as was a second attack a few days later.
They made the claim despite a previous tribunal, of Bosnian Serb General Stanislav Galic, which established that Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for the shelling.
In his statement Demorenko claimed that a Bosnian liaison officer threatened he would kill him when he gave a statement to the press contradicting the findings of two UN investigations that accused Serb forces of responsibility for the marketplace bombings.
He added he did not recognise the picture of Sarajevo under siege by the Serbs presented by the western media and military officials whom he accused of spreading "rumours".