Karadzic Set to Face War Crimes Tribunal
By VOA News
31 July 2008
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is set to appear before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague this hour, to face genocide charges from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Ahead of Thursday's arraignment, Karadzic told tribunal officials from a jail cell that he will defend himself. He declined the offer of a court-appointed attorney.
Karadzic will be asked to enter pleas to 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, for his alleged role in masterminding atrocities against non-Serbs during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. If convicted, the 63-year-old Karadzic faces life in prison.
Karadzic arrived in the Hague Wednesday, a week after his arrest by Serbian police in Belgrade. He has spent part of the past decade in the Serbian capital, heavily disguised with a beard and long white hair. He was practicing alternative medicine at the time of his arrest.
New photos taken this week show a clean-shaven Karadzic.
The genocide charges stem from a campaign of shelling and sniping that terrorized civilians in Sarajevo in the early 1990s and the 1995 massacre of an estimated 8,000 Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica.
Separately Thursday, Karadzic's brother, Luka, told Russia's Izvestia newspaper that his brother expected to be arrested and is well-prepared for the trial. He also says his brother hopes he may be able to benefit from Russian diplomacy.
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