Karadzic Says Fair Trial Impossible

Radovan Karadzic, who is in custody awaiting trial for genocide, has asked judges at the Hague tribunal to drop the charges against him, claiming that the prosecution has intimidated his witnesses, thus preventing a fair trial.



The former Bosnian Serb president said that a search conducted by NATO troops at his wife’s house in Pale, east of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in December 2008, and another raid at the home of his wife’s sister on March 27 have created “a climate of fear” among people he intends to call as witnesses or rely on for information to help his case.



Karadzic handed judges video images of NATO peacekeepers outside his wife’s home on December 2.



The December raid, which was carried out at three o’clock in the morning, was part of a NATO effort to obtain information from Karadzic’s family about the possible whereabouts of the former Bosnian Serb general and war crimes fugitive, Ratko Mladic.



Mladic was indicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, along with Karadzic for alleged involvement in war crimes in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, including the genocide in Srebrenica when 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were massacred in July 1995.



“On March 27, 2009, they struck again,” Karadzic told judges in a written motion this week.



“The search, which lasted for two and a half hours, was conducted pursuant to a Bosnian court in Sarajevo.”



However, NATO spokesman Derek Chappell told IWPR that the organisation was not involved in the March 27 operation.



Karadzic says he has in his possession the court order from the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo requesting the March 27 raid to be carried out and says that the order itself is signed by two members of the tribunal’s Office of the Prosecutor, OTP.



“There is now irrefutable evidence that [OTP] is behind these raids and is responsible for the distress and alarm they have caused among persons who will be needed as defence witnesses for Dr Karadzic,” the defendant, who is representing himself during his trial, wrote to judges on April 14.



The tribunal’s OTP has dismissed Karadzic’s claims.



“We reject Mr Karadzic's allegations of abuse of process and intimidation of witnesses,” Olga Kavran, spokeswoman for OTP, told IWPR.



Kavran, who would not discuss whether OTP staff had signed the order for the March raid, said the office was acting “in full accordance with” the court’s rules and is currently drafting a response to Karadzic’s allegations.



Karadzic’s legal adviser, Peter Robinson, wrote to the Office of the High Representative, OHR, in Bosnia on December 5, 2008, to determine who sanctioned the first of the raids, noting that it was “a highly unusual and invasive law enforcement tactic”.



“Actions such as this can have a serious interference with our defence at the ICTY by intimidating and discouraging potential witnesses and sources of information for us,” he said.



The OHR denied any involvement in the raid.



Karadzic has asked judges to hold a hearing to establish the justification for the searches on his relatives’ homes and then to dismiss the indictment against him.



“Because the real and only purpose of these raids is to make it impossible for Dr Karadzic to mount a defence, and to have a fair trial, Dr Karadzic respectfully requests that the trial chamber dismiss his case,” he submitted.



In addition to the genocide in Srebrenica, Karadzic is charged with a second count of genocide in an alleged bid to remove non-Serbs from large parts of Bosnia during 1992. He also faces trial for the 44-month siege of Sarajevo which resulted in around 12,000 civilian deaths. The trial is expected to start later this year.



Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.