UN court set to rule on Karadzic's appeal

United Nations appeals judges will on Wednesday rule whether to uphold or overturn Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's 2016 convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as his 40-year sentence.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic appears in the courtroom for his appeals judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague on July 11, 2013.
Reuters Archive

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic appears in the courtroom for his appeals judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague on July 11, 2013.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will face UN appeals judges on Wednesday for a ruling that will end one of the highest profile legal battles stemming from the Balkan wars of the 1990s that saw the collapse of the former Yugoslavia.

Karadzic, 73, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2016 after being convicted of genocide for the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces.

He was also found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for being the political mastermind behind a campaign of ethnic cleansing that saw Croats and Muslims driven from Serb-claimed areas of Bosnia.

Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence and a second genocide conviction for his alleged role in a policy of targeting non-Serbs across Bosnia in the early years of the war. Karadzic meanwhile is appealing against his conviction.

Nura Begovic, who lost 16 relatives in the Bosnian war, is hoping for the maximum jail term.

“Nobody can return our loved ones but [a life sentence] would mean there is at least some justice,” said Begovic, whose brother's remains were identified in a DNA laboratory at the International Commission for Missing People in The Hague last month after being recovered from a mass grave.

TRT World 's Melinda Nucifora speaks to the survivors who await justice decades after the war.

Loading...

The anti-Croat and Muslim campaign under Karadzic included the establishment of a system of detention camps where non-Serbs were held in inhumane conditions, beaten, tortured and sexually assaulted, trial judges ruled.

Karadzic was instrumental in the campaign of shelling and sniping against civilians during the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, which terrorised the Bosnian capital’s population, the trial judges said.

He was arrested on a Belgrade bus in 2008 after a manhunt of more than a decade. In his last few years on the run in Serbia he had posed as a new age therapist named Dragan Dabic, complete with a flowing grey beard.

An appeal verdict is pending in the case of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, who was convicted of war crimes and genocide in November 2017 and sentenced to life in prison. 

Route 6