Karadzic: Request by former detainees
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The Association of Detainees of Bosnia and Herzegovina has asked the sitting judge at the Hague Tribunal to withdraw his decision allowing Radovan Karadzic to be interviewed by a journalist from Revu newspaper from the Netherlands.
If the decision is not withdrawn, the Association says it will ask the UN Security Council and other international organizations to take steps to dismiss O-Gon Kwon, the judge who made the decision.
“This is an unprecedented decision rendered by the Tribunal, which allows the indictee to publicly present the same lies that caused more than a million innocent victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to suffer during the course of the war,” the Association of Detainees of Bosnia and Herzegovina said in a statement.
Radovan Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska, is charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, with genocide and other war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After having been on the run for twelve years, Karadzic was arrested in Serbia in July 2008. He was extradited to the Hague Tribunal the same month.
In November last year the indictee agreed to an interview with Revu, but the Tribunal Registrar did not allow this, citing the possibility of “sensationalistic reporting and threats to the security system, in particular in case the journalist visits him and discloses details pertaining to the security mechanisms in the Detention Unit.”
Upholding Karadzic’s appeal, in which he claimed that his “right to freedom of speech” was violated, Judge Kwon revoked the Registrar’s decision.
“It is pretty clear that it is possible that Karadzic will contact the media in such a way as to not endanger the security of the Detention Unit, as described in the Registrar’s motion. The Registrar failed to consider some alternative communication means which could ensure respect of the Tribunal’s procedures and rules,” the Court decision states.
By this decision Karadzic is allowed to contact journalist Zvezdana Vukojevic “in writing, by phone or any other way considered appropriate by the Registrar”.
The Court said staff from the Registrar’s Office would monitor the communication between the indictee and the journalist.
