First witness testifies in Karadzic war crimes trial

Apr 14, 2010, 2:17 GMT

The Hague - A Bosnian Muslim recounted how he was detained and repeatedly beaten unconscious by Serbian forces as the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic resumed at The Hague on Tuesday.

Ahmet Zulic told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) how in one instance he was told to make the sign of the Christian cross while being detained in a makeshift prison camp in a garage.

'When I refused to do, they stepped on my hands and broke my fingers,' Zulic told the court.

Zulic, who had previously testified in other ICTY trials, including that against former Yugoslav supremo Slobodan Milosevic, was the first of a long list of witnesses called by the prosecution in its case against Karadzic.

The former Serb leader 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 1992-95 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. He faces life imprisonment if convicted.

Tuesday's hearing marked the resumption of the trial after a 5-week break as appeal judges considered and rejected a fresh request from Karadzic to be given more time to prepare his defence.

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 is conducting his own defence.

During the course of Tuesday's hearing, Zulic was also expected to recall a particularly gruesome episode in the Bosnian Serb's alleged ethnic-cleansing campaign - the June 1992 murder by Serbian soldiers of some 20 men who had been forced to dig their own graves.

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