Karadzic's boycott of trial an insult, war victims say

Karadzic's boycott of trial an insult, war victims say Sarajevo/Belgrade - Bosnian Muslim organizations have voiced disappointment over the false start to Radovan Karadzic's war crimes trial in The Hague, media in the region said Tuesday.

The former Bosnian Serb leader, who is representing himself in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), boycotted the start of the trial Monday. Karadzic argues that he needs more time to prepare his defence.

Karadzic is charged with genocide and other atrocities that targeted non-Serbs during the 1992-95 war, most notably the three- year siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.

"After he had said he would not appear in the courtroom, I knew some chicanery was coming," Nisveta Zametica, the head of one of the war victims organizations, was quoted as saying by the Balkan Insight internet portal.

"I have the feeling that there is no justice for us victims at all," she said. "We feel as if they are committing the crime against us again, but this time it is even more horrible, because it is the world that is committing it."

The Muslims, or Bosniaks, who make up half of Bosnia's 4 million inhabitants, suffered the most casualties and had the most people displaced from their homes.

Bosnia had sued Serbia for damages, alleging that Belgrade commanded the war, but the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an ambiguous ruling in 2007 that Serbia, while doing nothing to stop the genocide in Bosnia, had not organized it.

The former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died a year earlier, before his own trial for genocide in Bosnia could end with a verdict that might have effectively implicated Belgrade.

Like Karadzic, Milosevic defended himself at the ICTY. The former Serb leader's deteriorating health often stalled his mammoth trial. Many among the victims of the Yugoslav wars believed that he, along with Serbia, had escaped justice when he died just weeks before the trial was due to conclude.

After Milosevic, Karadzic is the most prominent leader from the past decade who could shed light on the relationship between Bosnian Serbs and Belgrade and on Serbia's alleged role in the war.

Officials in Sarajevo - including Muslims, Serbs and Croats - have not yet made formal announcements regarding developments in the Karadzic trial. But Bosniak representatives accuse the international community of protecting Serbia.

"This, what is now going on in the trial of Karadzic, is proof that evidence of Serbia's responsibility will be kept in the dark at any cost," a Bosnian-Muslim parliamentarian, Halid Genjac, told the Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz. (dpa)