THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Purse-lipped and gaunt, Radovan Karadzic appeared before a U.N. war-crimes tribunal for the first time Thursday and in sharply worded Serbian vowed to defend himself against genocide and other charges “as I would defend myself against any natural catastrophe.”
In remarks that were cut short by the judge, the former Bosnian Serb leader suggested he would attempt to expose alleged double-dealing by the West, particularly the United States, in the wake of the 1992-95 Bosnian war. That could presage the kind of political grandstanding that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who also represented himself, used to sidetrack his prosecution before he died in his cell at the tribunal’s detention center.
Except for two guards who flanked him, Karadzic’s side of the court was empty.
“I have an invisible adviser, but I have decided to represent myself,” said Karadzic.
Shorn of the beard and long hair that helped disguise him as an alternative- health guru in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, Karadzic listened mostly impassively as Judge Alphons Orie read a summary of the indictment. The former president of the Bosnian Serb republic and supreme commander of Bosnian Serb forces faces two counts of genocide arising from the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica, the single worst atrocity in Europe since the end of World War II. Karadzic also faces other charges, including crimes against humanity and murder, for ethnic cleansing and creating prison camps where Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats were killed, sexually assaulted and brutalized.
Karadzic’s military commander on the ground, Ratko Mladic, who is also wanted on genocide charges, remains at large.
Karadzic declined to enter a plea during the 70-minute hearing, exercising his right not to do so for 30 days. He answered a series of simple questions, sometimes with a flash of humor. Asked if his family knew where he was, Karadzic said, “I do not believe there is anyone who doesn’t know that I am in detention.” When the judge inquired as to conditions since he arrived in the Netherlands, Karadzic said he had been “in worse places.”
Karadzic was prevented from reading in full a four-page statement he had prepared, although he managed to tell the court he had wanted to appear before the tribunal soon after his 1995 indictment.
He suggested a deal had been cut with U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the Dayton peace agreement ending the war in Bosnia, that Karadzic would not be sent to The Hague if he didn’t endanger the accord.
The suspicion that in the immediate aftermath of the war, NATO forces and U.N. police were not actively seeking Karadzic because of a secret deal has lingered for years. Karadzic was able to move around freely in Pale, the Bosnian Serb enclave near Sarajevo, and regularly crossed NATO and police checkpoints until 1997, when he went into hiding, according to reports at the time.
