Karadzic boycotts own war crimes trial
Updated on 26 October 2009
The war crimes trial of Radovan Karadzic, who led the Bosnian Serbs through a brutal three-year civil war in the early 1990s, begins without him.
The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic refused to attend the start of his war crimes trial, and judges said if he failed to show up again they could appoint a lawyer to represent him.
Karadzic, who denies all 11 war crimes charges arising from the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including genocide, is representing himself and said he needed more to time to prepare.
Judge O-Gon Kwon said the trial would restart on Tuesday with plans for prosecutors to make opening statements and said that the court would assign a legal team to Karadzic if he once again disrupted proceedings by not appearing.
"There are also circumstances in which a chamber can assign a counsel to an accused if his self representation is obstructing the proceedings of a trial," Kwon said.
Judges are eager to get the trial of the tribunal's highest profile defendant under way after his arrest 15 months ago.
The prosecution and defence will each have one year to present their case for Radovan Karadzic.
Karadzic is boycotting the opening in a defiant gesture against what he considers a rush to justice by the UN court prosecuting him in The Hague.
Karadzic's trial will pivot around the massacre of thousands of young men in Srebrenica in July 1995.
After a siege and stand-off with UN peacekeepers who were meant to be protecting a "safe haven", Bosnian Serbs were handed thousands of young Muslim men, most of whom were killed.
In 1996, under pressure from the international community, and after losing the support of his allies in Serbia, Karadzic was forced into hiding.
