Karadzic Trial Halted Until May
Defendant granted extra time to review prosecution material.
Karadzic Trial Halted Until May
Defendant granted extra time to review prosecution material.
The Radovan Karadzic trial at the Hague tribunal adjourned this week and will be suspended until May 23 while the accused reviews thousands of pages recently disclosed to him by the prosecution.
Judges initially granted Karadzic a six-week suspension to review the material, and chided the prosecution for their “pattern” of disclosure violations.
On March 17, the judges granted the accused an extra two weeks to review an additional 20,000 pages disclosed at the end of February. In that decision, the bench wrote it “reiterates its recent observations and concerns about the impact of the prosecution’s inadequate approach to its disclosure violations on the smooth conduct of this trial and notes that this further suspension is the latest product of those failings”.
Before adjourning for the two-month break, Karadzic completed his cross-examination of prosecution witness Nedeljko Prstojevic, who held various positions in the defendant’s government in Sarajevo and Ilidza during the war. Prstojevic testified about the formation of the Bosnian Serb crisis staff on a municipal level, as well as about meetings he attended with the Bosnian Serb political and military leadership.
Prosecutors allege that Karadzic, the president of Bosnia’s self-declared Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, is responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which “contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory”.
He is accused of planning and overseeing the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left nearly 12,000 people dead, as well as the massacre of some 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995. Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
