Karadzic tells war crimes court he should be rewarded

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands – Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic told the UN Yugoslav war crimes court on Tuesday, October 16, that he should be rewarded as he had done everything to avoid war.

“I should have been rewarded for all the good things that I’ve done because I did everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering,” Karadzic told the Hague-based court as he began his defense against charges including genocide.

Arrested in 2008, Karadzic, 67, is notably on trial for his role in masterminding the massacre of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.

It was the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II. Bosnian Serb troops under the command of wartime general Ratko Mladic overran Dutch UN peacekeepers in the enclave and systematically killed their Muslim victims over several days.

Although he does not deny that killings took place, Karadzic has always questioned the scale of the massacre and said he was unaware that those taken prisoner by Bosnian Serb forces would be executed.

Karadzic is also being prosecuted by the UN court for his role in the 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo between May 1992 and November 1995 in which 10,000 people died under terrifying sniper and artillery fire.

Like Mladic, he faces charges for his role in taking hostage UN observers and peacekeepers to use them as human shields during a NATO bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb targets in May and June 1995. – Agence France-Presse