On Appeal, Serb Leader Slams ‘Myths’ about Bosnian War

Once-feared Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic Monday urged UN judges to throw out his war crimes convictions, angrily denying he was behind a campaign of ethnic cleansing and murders in the Balkans conflict two decades ago, AFP reported.

Addressing the start of a twoday appeal hearing, Karadzic, 72, fiercely denounced what he called “myths” about the permanent removals or expulsions of Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the 1992-95 war.

In March 2016, he was sentenced to 40 years behind bars for the bloodshed committed during the conflict which killed 100,000 people and left 2.2 million others homeless during the death throes of the former Yugoslavia.

Once the most powerful Bosnian Serb leader, Karadzic became the highest-ranked person to be convicted and sentenced at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, after Serbian expresident Slobodan Milosevic died while on trial.

The trial judges ruled Karadzic was “at the apex of political and military structures” of the Bosnian Serb leadership.

But the former strongman hit back, lodging 50 grounds of appeal, claiming before the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) -- which has taken over from the ICTY -- that he was not given a fair trial.

He told the five appeals judges on Monday that he was a political leader seeking to protect Yugoslavia and its constitution, and that his statements made in the 1990s had been “distorted” and “his words travestied” during the trial.