No chance of a fair trial, Karadzic says in first statement
Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb warlord awaiting trial for genocide, says that high-ranking officials in the 1990s US administration of Bill Clinton want him dead and that it will be impossible for him to receive a fair trial after 12 years on the run ended with his arrest last week, it emerged yesterday.
"No one on earth believes in the possibility of an acquittal," Karadzic argued in a four-page statement which he was prevented from reading to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Thursday at a pre-trial hearing. "Others from President Clinton's team ... are in a hurry to see me dead."
Karadzic said that several months after the Bosnian war ended in November 1995, Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy who engineered the peace settlement at Dayton in Ohio, made the genocide suspect an offer.
"The offer was as follows: I must withdraw not only from public but also from party offices and completely disappear from the public arena."
Karadzic, who was head of the main Serbian party in Bosnia and president of the self-proclaimed Serbian republic in half of Bosnia, was indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity in 1995.
He retired from politics a year later and vanished until he was arrested on a bus in Belgrade in Serbia last week disguised as a long-haired alternative medicine aficionado.
"Holbrooke undertook on behalf of the USA that I would not be tried before this tribunal," Karadzic wrote in the first statement prepared for his defence against 11 counts of genocide and extermination of Bosnia's Muslims as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes. The statement was released yesterday by the tribunal in The Hague.
The allegations of a secret deal between Holbrooke and Karadzic have circulated in the Balkans for years and the American has repeatedly dismissed them contemptuously over the past week while stating that Karadzic is a mass murderer who deserves the death penalty.
"It's an invented story and no one ought to believe it," Holbrooke said.
"What I said was, 'If anyone deserves the death penalty, it's Karadzic and Mladic,'" Holbrooke said, referring to Karadzic's top military commander, Ratko Mladic, who is still a fugitive.
Karadzic added that Madeleine Albright, Clinton's secretary of state, told Biljana Plavsic, Karadazic's successor as Bosnian Serb leader - who is serving an 11-year sentence for war crimes after plea-bargaining and confessing her guilt - that Karadzic should go away to "Russia, Greece or Serbia".
Karadzic claimed that the Hague tribunal defied US pressure to drop the case against himself, causing Holbrooke to "switch to Plan B - the liquidation of Radovan Karadzic".
Accused of being responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of mainly Muslims in Bosnia, Karadzic said he now feared for his own life.
"Mr Holbrooke's wish for my disappearance ... is today still fresher and stronger and the actions aimed at bringing this about are tireless."
Unlike previous high-profile Serbian war crimes suspects at the tribunal, Karadzic did not query the court's legitimacy and said he wanted to surrender in the 1990s but felt cheated by tribunal investigators.
He insisted to the court on Thursday that he would defend himself and eschew any legal team. But tribunal sources say that privately he is signalling otherwise and could decide to employ well-known lawyers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/02/radovankaradzic.warcrimes
