Karadzic to face first witness as war crimes trial resumes

Apr 13, 2010, 14:36 GMT

The Hague - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was Tuesday set to face his first accuser - a Muslim survivor of a Serb detention camp in north-western Bosnia - at the resumption of his war crimes trial in The Hague.

Ahmet Zulic, who also testified against former Yugoslav supremo Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was expected to tell the court about the inhumane treatment of Muslim prisoners by Serbian soldiers in Sanski Most, during the 1992-95 Bosnian War.

He was also expected to recall the June 1992 murder by Serbian soldiers of some 20 men who had been forced to dig their own graves - a particularly gruesome episode in the Bosnian Serb's alleged ethnic- cleansing campaign in the former Yugoslav province.

The prosecutor's witness was then expected to be cross-examined by judges and by the defendant during the course of the afternoon hearing.

Karadzic faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role as supreme commander of the Bosnian Serb armed forces during the Bosnian war.

The most notorious episode of his ethnic-cleansing campaign is the 1995 Massacre of Srebrenica, which saw Bosnian Serb armed forces kill some 8,000 Bosniak civilians living in what was then a UN-protected 'safe area.'

Karadzic denies the charges. In his opening statements to the court last month, he dismissed the Srebrenica Massacre as 'a myth' and repeatedly portrayed local Serbs as helpless victims of Muslim (Bosniak) aggression.

The 64-year-old former psychiatrist was arrested in July 2008 in Belgrade, where he had been hiding disguised as the long-bearded Dragan David Dabic, doctor of alternative medicine. He faces a life sentence if convicted by the ICTY court.