THE HAGUE: United Nations’ judges said on Thursday that former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was criminally responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and crimes against humanity in other towns and villages during the Bosnian war of the 1990s.
He was acquitted by The Hague tribunal of a first count of genocide in connection with the Bosnian municipalities, but judges have yet to rule on a second genocide charge – Karadzic’s involvement in the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst since World War Two, in which 8,000 Muslims died.
Presiding judge O-Gon Kwon said the three-year Sarajevo siege, during which the city of Serbs, Muslims and Croats was shelled and sniped at by besieging Bosnian Serb forces, could not have happened without Karadzic’s support.
U.N. judges have begun the lengthy process of reading their verdict in the trial. Karadzic is the highest-ranking person to face a reckoning before the tribunal over a war two decades ago in which 100,000 people were killed as rival armies carved Bosnia up along ethnic lines that largely survive today.
Among the main charges is that Karadzic, who was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run, controlled Serb forces that carried out the Srebrenica killings after overrunning the supposed U.N.-designated “safe area”.
Karadzic, who once headed the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and was Supreme Commander of its armed forces, said in an interview ahead of the verdict that he had worked to uphold peace and deserved praise, not punishment.
The 70-year-old former psychiatrist, still in robust health, is charged with two counts of genocide, one for Srebrenica and another for a campaign to purge Bosnian Muslims and Croats from towns around the country.
He could receive a life sentence for these and nine other counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Appeals, which could take several more years, are expected regardless of the verdict.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said he would stand by the Serbs of Bosnia.
