Prosecutors Reject Call to Restart Karadzic Trial
Lawyers say defendant has not proved that late disclosures have tainted proceedings.
Prosecutors Reject Call to Restart Karadzic Trial
Lawyers say defendant has not proved that late disclosures have tainted proceedings.
Prosecutors at the Hague tribunal this week called on judges to dismiss wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic’s request for a new trial.
Karadzic claimed on August 13 that a new trial was necessary because the prosecution had committed “numerous” violations of the evidence disclosure rules, thus rendering the current proceedings unfair. (See Karadzic Requests New Trial.)
Since his trial began in October 2009, Karadzic has filed more than 70 motions contending that the prosecution disclosed items to him late or improperly.
In a written response to Karadzic’s latest request, the prosecution said on August 27 that the trial’s integrity remained unharmed, so the hearings should go ahead as planned.
“The trial is fair and should continue. In his motion, the accused does not show that a new trial is warranted, either as a remedy or a sanction,” the prosecution stated.
In his request, Karadzic claimed that disclosure violations had created a “prejudice… that has polluted the fairness of his trial”, and that only a brand new trial could rectify this.
Karadzic accused the prosecution of failing to disclose 406 witness statements and pieces of testimony on time, in addition to “hundreds of thousands” of documents which he said were disclosed late and could potentially exonerate him.
The prosecution said the defendant had failed to prove these claims.
“Not only was the prosecution’s case clearly and properly set out in the indictment, pretrial brief and opening statement, the accused does not cite any example of disclosure which changed the prosecution case,” the lawyers said.
They added that Karadzic had not identified a legal basis for his request, nor had he demonstrated that a new trial was necessary.
They said judges had “already found that the accused suffered no prejudice from the prosecution’s discrete failures to disclose material in a timely manner”.
The prosecution also said the judges had managed the case in such a way as to ensure fairness, particularly when it came to issues of disclosure. This has involved postponing witness testimony, suspending the trial to let Karadzic prepare, and asking the prosecution to explain its disclosure methods.
Prosecutors allege that Karadzic, the president of Bosnia’s self-declared Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, is responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which “contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory.”
He is also accused of planning and overseeing the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left nearly 12,000 people dead, as well as the massacre of more than 7,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995.
Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run.
Rachel Irwin is IWPR Senior Reporter in The Hague.
