I'm a peace lover, Karadzic claims

on 16/10/2012 18:26:30

Accused mass murderer Radovan Karadzic portrayed himself as a peace-loving tolerant man as he opened his defence today in his war crimes trial.

The former Bosnian Serb leader claimed he tried to prevent fighting and then worked to reduce casualties in the bloody 1992-95 Bosnian war.

His claims brought snorts of derision and cries of "He's lying! He's lying!" from Muslim survivors of the war who were watching the trial from the public gallery at the UN tribunal in The Hague.

Karadzic, who faces charges including genocide and crimes against humanity, was given 90 minutes to make a statement on his role in the war that left an estimated 100,000 dead. The statement was not made under oath, meaning Karadzic could not be cross-examined by prosecutors.

Karadzic, a former psychologist and poet, told judges he was a "physician and literary man" who was a reluctant player in the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. He said before the war many of his friends, including his hairdresser, were Muslims.

"Instead of being accused of the events in our war, I should be rewarded for all the good things I have done," he said through a court interpreter. "I did everything humanly possible to avoid the war. … I succeeded in reducing the suffering of all civilians."

Prosecutors have painted a different picture of Karadzic during months of evidence, portraying him as a political leader who masterminded Serb atrocities throughout the war, from campaigns of persecution and murder of Muslims and Croats early in 1992 to the conflict's bloody climax, the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the supposedly UN-protected Srebrenica enclave.

Karadzic, 67, who looked relaxed and cheerful in court as he read his statement from a text, denied that portrait of him.

"Everybody who knows me knows I am not an autocrat, I am not aggressive, I am not intolerant," he told judges. "On the contrary, I am a mild man, a tolerant man with great capacity to understand others."

He also said some of the worst atrocities of the war, including two deadly shelling attacks on a Sarajevo marketplace in 1994 and 1995, were "orchestrated" to turn public opinion against Serbs.

Karadzic said Sarajevo was his adopted home and that "every shell that fell on Sarajevo hurt me personally."

He called the first marketplace shelling a "shameless orchestration."

"Obviously some people got killed by that explosion but we also saw mannequins being thrown onto trucks creating this show for the world."

Karadzic boycotted the start of his trial in October 2009 saying he had not been given enough time to prepare. The first witness did not testify until April 2010 and prosecutors rested their case on May 25 this year.

Just over a month later, judges acquitted Karadzic of one count of genocide, saying prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to establish that a campaign of murder and persecution early in the Bosnian War amounted to genocide. Prosecutors have appealed the acquittal.

Karadzic still faces 10 more charges, including one genocide count relating to the Srebrenica massacre.
His wartime military chief Ratko Mladic is also on trial in The Hague, facing the same charges. Both men face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.

But Karadzic insisted Muslims and Croats were to blame for the conflict in Bosnia.

"It is a terrible misconception and great injustice, this portrayal of the Serbs as the ones who started the war," he said.

In Bosnia, reaction to Karadzic's statement divided sharply along ethnic lines.

In the Serb-controlled Lukavica neighbourhood of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, Serbs accused the tribunal of bias.

Just a few streets away in the part of Sarajevo that falls under the Bosnian-Croat Federation and came under heavy attack from Karadzic's forces during the war, people wanted the court to hand down a punishment that would fit Karadzic's alleged crimes, if he is convicted.