Karadzic Asks for Stay of Proceedings

“The acceptance of facts and earlier statements has overwhelmed Karadzic with a bulk of incriminating pieces of evidence even before the trial has started. He is standing at the starting point while these devices have pushed the Prosecution just a few millimeters away from the goal line. There is simply no way Karadzic can have a fair trial under the circumstances. The Trial Chamber has the right to discontinue a trial if its continuation would endanger the indictee’s basic rights,” the motion filed by the former Republika Srpska President says.

Karadzic, who is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of the laws and customs of war committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995, considers that the Trial Chamber’s decision to accept facts determined by other verdicts and statements given by some witnesses, without an opportunity for cross-examination, transfers responsibility for establishing the facts to him and “violates the innocence presumption” to a point that the trial already seems unfair.

Karadzic says that, up to the moment the motion was filed, the Trial Chamber had already accepted 1,500 facts contained in verdicts pertaining to events that took place in Sarajevo, Srebrenica and other municipalities, as well as statements given by 141 witnesses, depriving him of an opportunity to cross-examine them.

“According to the Tribunal’s jurisprudence, the acceptance of facts contained in other verdicts generates an irrefutable assumption in favour of those facts. The Prosecution has been exempted from proving the facts at the trial and the indictee is responsible for denying them,” Karadzic argues.

The indictee says the same in relation to the acceptance of earlier statements and testimony by witnesses, adding that he has not been given an opportunity to face and cross-examine them.

“Likewise, this generates a presumption in favour of the facts presented by those witnesses, which violates the basic principle of a fair trial at which the Prosecution is tasked with proving the facts while the indictee is protected by a presumption of innocence,” the former RS President said in his motion.

Karadzic added that even if the indictee’s right to a fair trial was not violated the Trial Chamber’s decision might turn the trial upside down, because the indictee is required to build a large case in order to deny the facts determined by other verdicts.

According to the latest decision rendered by the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, the trial of Radovan Karadzic, which began in October 2009, is due to continue on April 13.