Radovan Karadzic is accused of war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and other non-Serbs during the Siege of Sarajevo. He is also accused of the Srebrenica genocide.
The battle of wills between Radovan Karadzic and the judges in the Hague intensified today when the court decided to push ahead with the genocide trial of the former Bosnian Serb leader, even though he boycotted the proceedings for a second day.
Judge O-Gon Kwon, the chief judge, issued a second warning that Karadzic would have a legal representative imposed upon him if he continued to remain in his cell, and ruled that the prosecution could begin to outline the case against him.
To an array of empty desks reserved for Karadzic and his defence team, Alan Tieger for the prosecution began his opening statements by quoting the words uttered by Karadzic on the eve of the Bosnian conflict – the bloodiest seen in Europe since the Second World War.
“The time has come,” Tieger quoted Karadzic as telling the Bosnian Serb Parliament, as he signed the order to recapture Zepa and Srebrenica – the United Nations safe haven where Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
Mr Tieger added: “For years the Supreme Commander had directed his forces in a campaign to forcibly carve out a mono-ethnic state from a multi-ethnic country.”
The prosecution revealed that it had evidence from a series of recorded phone calls from 1991 in which Karadzic chillingly considered the fate of Sarajevo, the multi-ethnic Bosnian capital which Serb forces besieged for 44 months.
The phone taps record Karadzic saying: “They have to know that there are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo…. it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth.”
Mr Tieger said that Karadzic showed nothing but contempt for the views of the international community for the Bosnian Serb programme of ethnic cleansing – the euphemism invented during the conflict to sanitise the killing of thousands of Muslims.
“As he said in October 1991 in anticipation of what he had planned: ‘Europe will be told to go f*** itself, and not to come back until the job is finished’.”
Mr Tieger concluded: “This case is about that Supreme Commander, a man who harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to implement is vision of an ethnic Bosnia. That Supreme Commander was Radovan Karadzic.”
