Hague Tribunal Rejects New Karadzic Prosecution Witnesses

Presiding judge O-Gon Kwon said in his decision on Wednesday that he would not allow the prosecution to call new witnesses because they would testify about issues that should have already been addressed by the prosecution when was setting out its evidence against Karadzic.

The prosecution said it wanted to call the witnesses to contest claims made by Karadzic, who “tried to prove that attacks of Bosnian Serb forces on civilians were actually conflicts between armed forces and that the killings either didn’t happen or were unplanned”.

But the judge said that the prosecution should have expected Karadzic to mount such a vigorous defence.

“Although the prosecution claims that it could not anticipate some of the defence’s objections to the adjudicated facts, the chamber notes that the defendant said before the trial that he will question every single fact. Therefore the prosecution should have expected at least some of the objections and should have dealt with it while presenting its evidence,” the judge’s decision said.

The prosecution wanted to call war photographer Ron Haviv to testify about events in Bijeljina in 1992 and victims Rama Hodzic, Saho Arifovic, Azim Medanovic and Safet Taci to testify about events in Bratunac and Krajina, as well as several protected witnesses.

The Tribunal also recently rejected a prosecution request to introduce evidence of about a recently-discovered mass grave Tomasica near Prijedor, where several hundred victims’ remains have been found, saying that it would prolong the trial unnecessarily.

Karadzic is accused of genocide in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities including Prijedor, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats, terrorising the residents of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

His trial started in 2009 and the prosecution finished presenting its case in May 2012.

Karadzic’s defence called its last witness last month and closing arguments in the trial are expected to begin in late September.