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.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS