Bosnia

Karadzic refuses to plead to genocide charges

Article published on the 2009-03-03 Latest update 2009-03-03 15:24 TU

Radovan Karadzic on trial at the ICTY
(Credit: ICTY)

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic has refused to enter a plea to charges of genocide and war crimes at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague on Tuesday. Judges at the trial entered an automatic 'not guilty' plea for him.

"I am not going to enter a plea at all,"Karadzic told judge Ian Bonomy. "This tribunal does not have the right to try me," he added.

Karadzic is charged with 11 counts, including two counts of genocide,  extermination, murder, persecutions, deportation, inhumane acts, unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians and taking hostages.

Karadzic's first indictment was confirmed in July 1995, when he was charged with genocide and other crimes against civilians committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.

A second indictment against him was made later in the same year for his role in ordering the Srebrenica massacre, when some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in a UN safe zone.

He was arrested in July 2008 and transferred later in the same month to the ICTY. Karadzic had been hiding, disguised as a doctor of alternative medicine.