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The Balkans Today
Radovan Karadzic - Final Verdict: Live Blog
Follow BIRN’s reporters live for all the latest developments as the UN court in The Hague delivers its final verdict in the genocide and war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic.
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Photo: EPA/Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/POOL Welcome to our live blog following developments from The Hague and the Balkans as the UN court prepares to hand down its final verdict in the trial of Radovan Karadzic.
Our correspondent Denis Dzidic will be filing live updates from the Hague court, while our reporters in Sarajevo and Belgrade will be providing all the latest reactions from the region.
Karadzic was found guilty of genocide and other wartime crimes in the court’s first-instance verdict in 2016, but both the defence and the prosecution appealed. The defence is calling for acquittal, while the prosecution wants the former Bosnian Serb political leader to be given a life sentence.
Read our analysis of their reasoning. -
Photo: EPA/Valerie Kuypers Before he became the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, who is now 73, worked as a psychologist and published poetry.Read our profile of the man now facing judgment for some of the worst crimes in Europe since World War II. -
Photo: EPA/Koca Sulejmanovic Karadzic spent years on the run, posing as a New Age mystic, before being arrested in Belgrade in 2008.But a lot of the time he spent as a fugitive is still shrouded in secrets that the Serbian and Bosnian authorities seem reluctant to probe, while people who helped him remain unprosecuted.Read our feature about his years in hiding. -
Photo: EPA/Yves Herman/POOL Analysts have predicted that the final ruling in the Karadzic trial will only perpetuate continuing post-war ethnic divisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and fuel nationalist rhetoric.Our analysis has more details. -
Former President of the Croatian Government Jadranka Kosor posted a message of support for the Mothers of Srebrenica war victims’ group on Twitter ahead of the Karadzic verdict on Wednesday.“Today, in my thoughts and my heart, I am with the Mothers of Srebrenica. So that their suffering and the suffering of thousands of those who are mourning their loved ones is eased at least for a moment,” Kosor wrote.
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The pronouncement of the verdict will begin at 2pm local time in The Hague, but in a departure from usual practice, it will not be broadcast live on the UN court’s website - instead, the court will broadcast the proceedings with a time delay of 30 minutes.
This is because of the courtroom suicide in 2017 of former Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak, who took poison as his verdict was announced, live on the court’s website. -
In Radovan Karadzic’s home village of Petnjica in Montenegro, where he was born in 1945, he is not seen as a war criminal but as a local boy who made good and strived to protect the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a BIRN reporter discovered back in 2016.
Photo: BIRN -
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British barrister Geoffrey Nice, who was involved in several prosecutions at the Hague Tribunal, said he thought Karadzic is likely to be convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.“If there are no appeals favourable to Karadzic, then we can expect to see a life sentence,” Nice told BIRN outside the UN court.
Nice during the trial against Slobodan Milosevic in 2002. Photo: EPA/Koen Suyk -
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Nura Alispahic, whose two sons were killed by members of a Serb paramilitary group called the Scorpions, told BIRN outside the court that she wants a life sentence for Karadzic.
"He killed us all... our children... he deserves life," Alishapic said -
US lawyer Peter Robinson, legal adviser of Radovan Karadzic. Photo: Valerie Kuypers/EPA.
Karadzic has called for an acquittal on all counts. His American legal adviser Peter Robinson told BIRN earlier this week that the former Bosnian Serb president was “calmly waiting for the judgment”.“He is completely calm. He hopes for the best, but he is prepared for the worst,” Robinson said. -
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US lawyer Peter Robinson, legal adviser of Radovan Karadzic. Photo: Valerie Kuypers/EPA
Karadzic has repeatedly insisted that the international court was biased against him from the start.
His legal adviser, Peter Robinson, told AFP news agency ahead of the verdict that his client “fervently believed that the trial chamber judgment was wrong and the product of an unfair trial” -
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President of the Helsinki Committee in Serbia Sonja Biserko. Photo: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA.
Sonja Biserko, president of the Helsinki Committee in Serbia, told Bosnian newspaper Dnevni Avaz that she expects the appeals judges to uphold the first-instance conviction of Karadzic."I expect confirmation of the verdict with possibly minor changes in relation to the first-instance proceedings, anything other than that would lead to the further violation of the Hague Tribunal's reputation," Biserko said. -
People are entering the building in the Hague. Photo: BIRN Among the groups of war victims who are present at the court for the verdict, there is a sense of excitement and nervousness, with many telling BIRN they do not know what to make of the fact that one of the appeal judges was changed several months ago.
"We just fear politics coming into it," said Murat Tahirovic, president of the Association of Victims and Witnesses of genocide.Employees of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals refused to give on-the-record statements about their expectations, but some said they do not expect major differences from the first-instance verdict. -
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Radovan Viskovic, Prime Minister of Republika Srpska Photo: N1 Radovan Viskovic, prime minister of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska, expressed pessimism about Karadzic’s chances of acquittal.
"Knowing the practices so far and how the Hague Tribunal worked, I'm not optimistic," Viskovic told Bosnian daily newspaper Nezavisne Novine. -
Photo courtesy of ICTY. The verdict is scheduled to start in less than ten minutes, and it will be read out by veteran Hague judge Vagn Prusse Joensen.The other members of the five-person chamber are judges William Hussein Sekule, Jose Ricardo de Prada Solaesa, Graciela Susana Gatti Santana and Ivo Nelson de Caires Batista Rosa. -
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Speaking about the crimes in 20 Bosnian municipalities of which Karadzic was convicted, the judge said that Karadzic failed to prove that the trial chamber made the wrong conclusions in its verdict.
“The defendant simply lists his own disagreements with the trial chamber [in his appeal],” said Joensen. -
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Speaking about the charge accusing him of terrorising the civilian population of Sarajevo, judge Joensen said that Karadzic failed to prove that the trial chamber made a mistake in finding him guilty of the massacre at the Markale market in Sarajevo - one of the worst atrocities in the Bosnian capital during the siege of the city.
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The judge said the trial chamber reasonably concluded that orders that Karadzic gave, saying that civilians should not be attacked, were given at times which were politically beneficial to him - when he was negotiating or when under pressure by the international community.
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Radovan Karadzic faces final Bosnia war crimes verdict Photo: EPA-EFE/PPETER DEJONG The judge said that the appeal did not prove the trial chamber erred in finding that Karadzic’s signing of Directive 7 was a key part in creating conditions in which many people lost their lives. -
Photo: Peter Dejong/EPA-EFE Speaking about Karadzic's participation in the joint criminal enterprise responsible for the killings in Srebrenica, judge Joensen said that considering that Karadzic was in constant touch with people on the ground, there was no error in relation to conclusions that he was guilty. -
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Courtroom during Karadzic's verdict. Photo: print screen Turning to the final part of the verdict – the conviction for taking UN peacekeepers hostage - judge Joensen said that Karadzic failed to prove that the UN staff were lawfully detained."The chamber reminds of the absolute prohibition to take UN personnel as hostage," the judge added. -
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