Karadzic Wants Time to Read Mladic Notes
But judges say not necessary or in interests of justice to adjourn proceedings at this time.
Karadzic Wants Time to Read Mladic Notes
But judges say not necessary or in interests of justice to adjourn proceedings at this time.
Judges at the Hague tribunal last week denied Radovan Karadzic’s request to adjourn his trial for 30 days in order to review over 3,000 pages of notes handwritten by General Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian war.
The existence of 18 notebooks - seized during a February 23 search of Mladic’s wife’s home in Serbia – was revealed the week before last when prosecutors in several cases moved to add the material as exhibits they will present at trial.
Mladic, the commander of the main staff of the Bosnian Serb army from 1992 to 1996, is wanted by the tribunal for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has evaded arrest for years and is thought to be hiding in Serbia. Earlier last week, it was widely reported that his family is trying to have him declared legally dead under Serbian law.
Like Karadzic, Mladic is charged with responsibility for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the 44-month shelling of Sarajevo, as well as deportation, extermination, murder and persecutions of non-Serb civilians in various Bosnian municipalities.
In Karadzic’s May 26 adjournment request, he states that he has not had any time to begin reviewing the notebooks, which were first disclosed to his team on April 12 as scanned copies.
“It is only after reviewing the notebook entries carefully that Dr Karadzic will be able to take a position on whether the prosecution will be able to add them to its exhibit list,” his motion states.
Furthermore, he contended that the notebooks were directly relevant to two witnesses scheduled to soon testify in his trial – historian Robert Donia and anonymous witness KDZO88.
“Unless he is granted adjournment it is not humanly possible for Dr Karadzic to review the notebooks in advance of these two witnesses, which is to commence imminently,” he states.
Karadzic also says that “the potential significance of these notebooks goes far beyond anything that can be cured by recalling these witnesses at a later time for a limited cross examination on the notebook entries”.
Judges disagreed. In an oral ruling given during court proceedings on May 28, Presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon said that the “chamber finds it not necessary or in the interests of justice to adjourn the proceedings at this time”.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in the case of Jadranko Prlic are seeking to reopen their case in order to admit six new items, five of which are excerpts from the Mladic notebooks.
Prlic was a senior political official in the Bosnian Croat wartime entity, known as Herceg-Bosna. He is standing trial with five other co-accused, all of whom are charged with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against non-Croats during the war.
In another meeting, on July 8, 1993, attended by Karadzic, Mladic and former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, Karadzic is quoted in the notebooks as saying, “Help the Croats in order to force the Muslims to agree on a division of Bosnia.”
In another notebook entry dated February 3, 1994, from a meeting between senior Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat officials, Prlic is recorded as saying, “Muslims are the common enemy.”
The decision on whether the Prlic case will be reopened in light of the new evidence will now go before a judge.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
