Karadzic wants conviction overturned

Lawyers representing wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic have asked UN judges to overturn his conviction and 40-year jail sentence for genocide and demanded a retrial.

Karadzic was convicted two years ago for some of the worst war crimes committed as the former Yugoslavia broke apart in the 1990s, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed.

“We are here today to ask you to overturn Radovan Karadzic’s conviction and order a new trial,” defence lawyer Peter Robinson told a panel of UN judges as two days of appeal hearings got under way.

In the court room a group of victims from the “Bosnian Mothers of Srebrenica” organisation watched Karadzic, 72, who looked healthy and resolute. He was seated behind his legal team.

Karadzic, who was arrested a decade ago after a years-long manhunt, was found guilty on 10 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for the brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia he oversaw as president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic. His lawyers said his seven-year “out-of-control mega-trial” violated his rights to a fair hearing.

Karadzic would argue that the initial judgment was wrong in concluding that he was a member of a joint criminal enterprise to drive out nonSerbs from Serb-claimed territory in Bosnia and Croatia, his lawyers said. He would contest the charge that he supported the shelling of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, they said.

Karadzic’s conviction was handed down by UN judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia which said he was “at the apex of power” of the Bosnian Serb military and political hierarchy when the atrocities were committed. The appeals hearing is being held at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which is handling UN war crimes cases for the Balkans and Rwanda.