Large group of lawyers help Karadzic with his defense

 Former Bosnian Serb leader gets advice ahead of defending himself at ICTY

AFPFormer Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (right) is seen entering the ICTY courtroom at the start of his initial appearance on July 31, 2008, in this file photo.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who will boycott his long-awaited trial in a UN court next Monday, has a small army of mostly volunteer backroom lawyers advising him on his self-run defense.
Karadzic has put himself in charge of arguing, objecting and questioning witnesses in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, which has charged him with genocide and war crimes.
But Karadzic announced on Thursday that he would not be present for the scheduled opening of the trial as he needed more time to prepare.
In a written interview with AFP, he said he wants «to force the witnesses to present a true picture of what happened in Bosnia and who is responsible for it.» But he is not entirely alone: Karadzic enjoys the backing of eight defense team members paid by the ICTY, as well as another 20-odd attorneys, trainee advocates, and international law experts from all over the world assisting him free of charge.
«It is very unusual» to have such a big team on a case, his chief legal adviser Peter Robinson told AFP ahead of the trial - the most prominent before the ICTY since that of Yugoslav ex-President Slobodan Milosevic which ended without a verdict with his death in 2006.
Milosevic had also handled his own defense, a fact that many experts have partly blamed for the long-drawn out nature of his trial, which started in 2002.
The court ruled this month that two defense lawyers will be allowed to sit in on the proceedings. Robinson will be allowed to speak only at Karadzic's explicit request and only on legal issues.
Karadzic, 64, meets members of his team of legal advisers daily at the UN detention center in The Hague's seaside suburb of Scheveningen.
«Normally I go to the prison in the morning and I meet with him for about three hours from 10 to 1,» said Robinson.
Together they examine all the motions, appeals and requests filed by Karadzic.
«I explain it to him, he looks at it, we discuss it and he signs» before filing them with the registrar.
A former psychiatrist without legal training who refers to himself as «Doctor Karadzic» in his filings, the former strongman has said he works «full time, seven days a week» to study the million pages of evidence filed by the prosecutor.
«I know the facts better than any lawyer,» he told AFP, adding that this way «I can have the floor every day.» «He is really bright and he's very quick, he catches on very quickly,» said Robinson. «The only question is... whether he can question the witnesses well enough to bring up the facts that he wants to bring up. I think he'll do a pretty good job.»
«The quality of international tribunals depends on the quality of the defense,» said Goran Sluiter, international law expert at the University of Amsterdam, explaining his decision to be part of Karadzic's volunteer drafting team. Legal intern Kevin Griffith said Karadzic was «very appreciative of our work.»

Bodies believed to be from Srebrenica exhumed

SARAJEVO (AFP) - Remains believed to belong to at least 19 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre have been exhumed from a mass grave in eastern Bosnia, an official said yesterday.
«So far we have exhumed six complete and 13 incomplete skeletons,» Lejla Cengic of Bosnia's Missing Persons Institute told AFP.
The victims' hands had been tied with wire and two had been blindfolded, she added.
Forensic experts expect to find more bodies in the grave located in a 30-meter (99-foot) deep natural cave in the village of Bisina, near the eastern town of Tuzla.
Bullet casings found on the site indicate that the victims had been executed over the cave, Cengic said.
Bosnian Serbs overran the UN-protected Muslim enclave near the end of Bosnia's 1992-95 war before summarily killing around 8,000 Muslim men and boys within a few days.
The remains of thousands of the massacre victims have been exhumed over the past years from about 70 mass graves around the ill-fated town, with more than 5,600 people identified by DNA analysis.
The Srebrenica massacre is considered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. It is the only episode of Bosnia's war that has been ruled as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), both based in The Hague.
Source: Kathimerini