London
23 July 2008
The lawyer for former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic say he will conduct his own defense before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where he faces charges of genocide and war crimes committed in Bosnia in the 1990s. Karadzic was arrested near Belgrade on Monday and could be extradited to The Hague within days, but the fact that he's been on the run for nearly 13 years and working and living in Belgrade in disguise raises questions over who knew, why he was arrested now and whether his one time military commander, Ratko Mladic, might soon face the same fate. Sonja Pace has this report from London.
The Serbian government has said it is preparing to extradite Karadzic to The Hague. He faces charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his part in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. He and his one-time military commander, Ratko Mladic are specifically linked to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed and to the nearly four-year-long siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in which it is estimated that more than 10,000 people were killed.
Mladic remains at large and James Lyon says there must be continued pressure for his arrest.
"Over the years Serbia has always said, there are no war crime indictees in Serbia and yet they keep coughing them up in fits and starts, depending on political expediency," said Lyon. " So, it's very clear - Ratko Mladic is in Serbia, he can be arrested by the Serbian authorities, provided there's the political will. We need to say, let's get it over with. There are only two more left."
The second and last fugitive wanted by the international tribunal is Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.
The EU has set the handover of all war crimes suspects as a key condition for any future Serbian membership in the European Union.