Serbian ex-leader Radovan Karadzic tells UN court he tried to stop war
Serbian leader in dock for alleged war crimes in Bosnia 'should be rewarded' for the good he did
A strident Radovan Karadzic told the UN Yugoslav war-crimes court yesterday he should be rewarded for trying to avoid war in Bosnia and said no one thought there would be a genocide.
His claims brought snorts of derision from Muslim survivors of the war watching from the public gallery, and cries of: "He's lying!"
Karadzic, who faces charges including genocide and crimes against humanity, was given 90 minutes to make a statement on his role in the war. The statement was not made under oath, meaning Karadzic could not be cross-examined by prosecutors.
"I should have been rewarded for all the good things that I've done because I did everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering," the former Bosnian Serb leader told the court in The Hague as he began his defence.
"Neither I nor anyone else that I know thought that there would be a genocide against those who were not Serbs," said Karadzic, who is notably charged with masterminding Europe's worst post-war massacre, in the town of Srebrenica.
One victim, Fikret Alic, a former Muslim prisoner who featured in a famous picture of emaciated prisoners in a Bosnian Serb concentration camp in 1992, said: "It is very humiliating for us to hear his speech. The whole world has seen what happened in Bosnia."