Legal Journals

Former Bosnian Serb Leader Karadzic Refuses to Plead

By jlee

The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, refused to enter a plea at the Hague. He said that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) did not have the jurisdiction to try him, because he was offered immunity by US Diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the end of the Bosnian War in 1995. Judge Iain Bonomy said that Karadzic would “have the opportunity to deal with that in due course” and entered a plea of not guilty on Karadzic’s behalf on all 11 counts.

This is the second time Karadzic refused to enter a plea at the Hague. In July 2008, he refuesed to plead until prosecutors finalized all the charges against him. Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade last year for his alleged involvement in the siege of Sarajevo resulting in some 12,000 civilian deaths and the massacre of up to 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica.

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Full post as published by Harvard International Law Journal Digest on March 06, 2009 (boomark / email).