Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is guilty of genocide, beyond reasonable doubt, the prosecution said on Monday at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
In his closing arguments, chief prosecutor Alan Tieger said “hundreds of witnesses and … evidence confirmed the policy of ethnic cleansing, in which Karadzic was driving force.”
The aim of the campaign was to push the non-Serb population – Muslims and Croats – from large parts of Bosnia.
The prosecution has asked for life imprisonment.
Karadzic, now 69, was the Bosnian Serb political leader during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He is accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Among the actions he is being accused of are the massacre of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in July 1995, and the relentless shelling and sniper fire at the besieged city of Sarajevo throughout the war.
Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in 2008, after being on the run from justice for more than 13 years. His trial began in 2010 and is expected to reach the verdict stage late in 2015.
The former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is on trial separately at the tribunal on similar charges.
The two cases are the most important for the tribunal since the trial of the former Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who was accused of ordering so-called ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo with the aim of creating a “Greater Serbia.”
However, Milosevic died in 2004 while still on trial, so the verdict was never delivered.
All three – Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic – proclaimed their innocence and said their actions were intended to protect Serbs from persecution in areas where they were in a minority.
GNA
