Radovan Karadzic’s words urging the destruction of Bosnia’s non-Serbs rang out in a courtroom from speeches and intercepted phone calls as UN prosecutors opened their genocide and war crimes case against him.
The former Bosnian Serb leader boycotted his trial for the second day on Tuesday, despite warnings from the war crimes tribunal’s presiding judge that he could be stripped of his right to defend himself.
The trial promises to be the judicial climax of the Balkan wars of the early 1990s that left more than 100,000 people dead, most of them victims of Bosnian Serb attacks.
In his opening statement, prosecutor Alan Tieger called Karadzic the “undisputed leader” and “supreme commander” of the Serbs responsible for atrocities throughout Bosnia’s brutal four-year war.
“[Karadzic] harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to pursue his vision of an ethnically segregated Bosnia,” Tieger said.
Prosecutors allege Karadzic was the driving force behind atrocities beginning with the ethnic cleansing of towns and villages to create an ethnically pure Serb state in 1992 and culminating in Europe’s worst massacre since World War II, the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces.
Karadzic, who has submitted more than 250 motions to the court since he decided to represent himself, claims he has not had enough time to prepare for his defense, even though he was arrested more than 15 months ago and first indicted in 1995.
Judge O-Gon Kwon said he would consider imposing a lawyer to represent Karadzic if he continued to boycott proceedings.
At the end of Monday’s hearing, Kwon said if Karadzic continues his boycott when the case resumes next Monday, the court will hold a hearing on Tuesday to discuss its options, including assigning a defense counsel to represent Karadzic and possibly adjourning the trial to give an assigned lawyer time to prepare.
Karadzic faces 11 charges — two genocide counts and nine other war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has refused to enter any pleas, but insists he is innocent. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Tieger played video of a notorious Karadzic speech before war broke out in which the Bosnian Serb leader predicted that Muslims would disappear from Bosnia.
“By the disappearance of the Muslim people, Karadzic meant that they would be physically annihilated,” Tieger said.
He showed judges footage of skeletal Muslim prisoners behind the wire fence of a Serb-run detention camp and read from transcripts of intercepted phone conversations.
He quoted Karadzic as saying that Serb forces would turn the ethnically mixed Bosnian capital of Sarajevo into “a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die.”
Witnesses who survived the 44-month siege of Sarajevo have described living “in constant fear, day after day, for years, knowing that they or their loved ones were targets,” Tieger said, before showing judges video of a young boy fatally shot by a sniper and Bosnian Serb forces targeting mourners at a funeral.
Heavy rain and strong winds yesterday disrupted flights, trains and ferries, forcing the closure of roads across large parts of New Zealand’s North Island, while snapping power links to tens of thousands. Domestic media reported a few flights had resumed operating by afternoon from the airport in Wellington, the capital, although cancelations were still widespread after airport authorities said most morning flights were disrupted. Air New Zealand said it hoped to resume services when conditions ease later yesterday, after it paused operations at Wellington, Napier and Palmerston North airports. Online images showed flooded semi-rural neighborhoods, inundated homes, trees fallen on vehicles and collapsed
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In a softly lit Shanghai bar, graduate student Helen Zhao stretched out both wrists to have her pulse taken — the first step to ordering the house special, a bespoke “health” cocktail based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). “TCM bars” have popped up in several cities across China, epitomizing what the country’s stressed-out, time-poor youth refer to as “punk wellness,” or “wrecking yourself while saving yourself.” At Shanghai’s Niang Qing, a TCM doctor in a white coat diagnoses customers’ physical conditions based on the pulse readings, before a mixologist crafts custom drinks incorporating the herbs and roots prescribed for their ailments.
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
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