Karadzic calls Srebrenica massacre "myth"; trial delayed Ed: Incorporates 116 after end of hearing, adds details (Roundup)

Mar 2, 2010, 14:52 GMT

The Hague - Radovan Karadzic on Tuesday dismissed as a 'myth' the alleged massacre by Serb forces of thousands of civilians in Bosnia's Muslim enclave of Srebrenica at the height of the 1990s Bosnian conflict.

Making his opening statements at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Karadzic denied ordering the widely documented deportation, torture and murder of Muslims and called for a proper investigation into the prosecutions' charges.

The former Bosnian Serb leader also claimed a judicial victory by obtaining a fresh delay in his genocide and war crimes trial with a request to be granted more time to work on his defence. An appeal court will now have to be convened to consider the motion.

The prosecution had planned to call on witnesses to start testifying on Wednesday.

But, while regretting the 'inconvenience' caused to witnesses already on their way to the Hague, presiding judge O-Gon Kwon said it was in 'the interest of justice' to adjourn the trial indefinitely so as to allow Karadzic's request to be considered.

Despite the court's call for a speedy decision, it will take at least a week before a decision can be reached.

The Serb warlord had boycotted the trial's opening hearings in October and then obtained a four-month suspension as he worked on his defence case from his prison cell in the Dutch capital.

The defendant is the best-known Serbian leader to have been brought to trial in the Hague since Slobodan Milosevic, the late Yugoslav president who died four years ago while being tried for crimes against humanity by the United Nations court.

He denies all 11 charges brought against him. These include counts of genocide for acts allegedly committed by troops under his command during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.

The war in the former Yugoslav state left more than 100,000 dead and more than 2 million refugees and produced some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.

One of the conflict's most infamous case of ethnic cleansing is the so-called Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, in which Bosnian Serb forces are thought to have killed close to 8,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys.

Addressing the court, a cool and, at times, deferential Karadzic claimed that the massacre could not be proved in the absence of a proper investigation.

He also claimed that he had asked Serbian forces to show restraint in the face of daily Muslim provocations and that Muslim civilians had left their homes in Bosnia voluntarily.

'We will prove that (Muslim) civilians asked and were permitted to leave,' Karadzic told the court.

Relatives of the victims branded him a liar.

'We have been shocked by his lies. He has said nothing but lies, lies, lies!' said Nora Degovic, a Srebrenica woman who lost 16 family members as a result of inter-ethnic clashes in the former Yugoslav state during the 1990s.

Degovic is one of a handful of relatives of the thousands of victims of the 1992-95 war who have travelled to the Hague to follow the proceedings.

During his opening speeches, Karadzic repeatedly portrayed local Serbs as helpless victims of Muslim aggression, at one point claiming that Serb civilians were killed on one Christmas day, and depicting the Bosnian conflict as a 'just and holy war' against Muslim fundamentalist seeking to establish an Islamic state in the heart of Europe.

But Hatidza Mehmedovic, a woman who lost two sons and her husband in Srebrenica, said Muslims were equipped only with improvised petrol bombs and hunting rifles to counter heavy-armoured Serb army vehicles.

The Srebrenica mothers also accused Karadzic of conducting a 'shameless' and 'surreal' defence and expressed anger at Karadizic's apparent lack of remorse.

'I hope the prosecution will show the places where he ordered those crimes, the mass graves - then we'll see how he reacts,' Degovic said.

The founding member of the Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina told judges that the fact that less than 3,000 bodies had been found showed that the Srebrenica death toll was in fact much lower than had been reported. He also claimed that the overall death toll included people who had died of natural death, as well as residents of villages located up to 100 kilometres away.

'Every loss of life is regrettable, but why exaggerate?' he said.

Karadzic is also accused by prosecutors of taking more than 200 United Nations peacekeepers hostage, in late spring 1995, in order to stop NATO from conducting airstrikes against Bosnian Serb forces targeting the UN-protected 'safe area.'

But the defendant argued Tuesday that the blue berets were enemy combatants who had taken sides with the Muslims.

'Soldiers cannot be hostages when they are combatants fighting against us,' Karadzic told the court.