THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, defending himself against charges of Europe’s worst genocide since the Holocaust, told judges Monday that he was not the barbarian depicted by U.N. prosecutors but was protecting his people against a fundamentalist Muslim plot.
During a four-hour opening defense statement at the U.N. war-crimes tribunal, Karadzic barely referred to specific allegations of mass murder at Srebrenica, indiscriminate shelling of Sarajevo, the destruction of Bosnian Muslim and Croat villages, or the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.
But he took personal responsibility for Serb actions, as Yugoslavia dissolved and the region descended into a war in which about 100,000 people were killed, saying he was standing up for ethnic Serbs against Muslim Bosnians.
“I don’t want to defend myself by saying that I wasn’t important or that I didn’t occupy an important post while I was serving my people. Nor will I shift the blame to someone else,” he said. “I will defend that nation of ours and their cause, which is just and holy.”
He claimed Bosnia’s Serbs were under threat and physical attack by Muslims, led by former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who rejected power-sharing proposals and wanted an Islamic republic in Bosnia.
The Serbs “wanted to live with Muslims, but not under Muslims,” he said.
The image of the Muslims as victims was untrue, he said. The prosecution “is trying to make me out to be a barbarian attacking a good and friendly neighbor.”
Karadzic is the most senior person to appear before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia since former Serb President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in his cell before a verdict was reached.
Karadzic faces two counts of genocide and nine other counts of murder, extermination, persecution, forced deportation and the seizing of 200 U.N. hostages. He faces possible life imprisonment if convicted.
Prosecutors say Karadzic orchestrated a campaign to destroy the Muslim and Croat communities in eastern Bosnia to create an ethnically pure Serbian state.
