Radovan Karadzic will get a chance next month to defend his wartime Bosnian Serb administration against genocide charges when he appears as a witness in an appeal hearing for one of his closest allies.
Karadzic’s testimony at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal will likely give an indication of how he will defend himself at his own trial before the UN court, which is expected to start next year.
Karadzic is in custody awaiting trial on genocide charges for allegedly masterminding atrocities including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica and the deadly 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
The tribunal revealed on Friday that Karadzic will testify on Nov. 3 and Nov. 5 as a defense witness for Momcilo Krajisnik, the former Bosnian Serb parliament speaker who is appealing against his 2006 conviction in the murders of thousands of non-Serbs during a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign.
Krajisnik, who is serving a 27-year sentence, could not call Karadzic as a witness during his original trial because the former Bosnian Serb leader was on the run, trying to avoid arrest and extradition to the tribunal.
In a decision published on Friday, the tribunal’s appeals chamber said it believed that if Karadzic had testified at Krajisnik’s trial his evidence “could have had an impact on the verdict.”
Prosecutors, who objected to Karadzic being called, had no comment on the decision, spokeswoman Olga Kavran said.
Krajisnik was convicted for leading — allegedly with Karadzic — ethnic cleansing campaigns to drive Muslims and Croats out of large areas of Bosnia.
Karadzic and Krajisnik were close allies as president and parliament speaker in the breakaway Bosnian Serb republic known as Republika Srpska, and were reunited in the tribunal’s detention center after Karadzic’s arrest on a Belgrade bus in late July after 13 years as a fugitive.
In the original verdict on Krajisnik, judges said he and Karadzic ran Republika Srpska “as a personal fief” and described Karadzic as Krajisnik’s closest associate.
At an appeals hearing in August, one of Krajisnik’s lawyers, American Alan Dershowitz, said he had already met briefly with Karadzic and was confident he would help clear Krajisnik’s name.
“He will in fact be providing very significant exculpatory evidence,” Dershowitz told judges, without elaborating.
Prosecutors say they proved at Krajisnik’s trial that he was involved in a criminal conspiracy, along with Karadzic and other Serb leaders, to create ethnically pure Serb areas within Bosnia.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not