Radovan Karadzic Wanted to Destroy Bosniaks
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Prosecutor Alan Tieger told the Hague Tribunal on Tuesday that Karadzic was guilty of overseeing combined acts of murders, forced displacement and other crimes with the aim of destroying the entire Bosniak community during the 1992-95 conflict.
When thousands are killed and thousands are traumatised and detained, most of their homes and places of prayer are destroyed and the rest are displaced across the world, one can clearly define the intention to destroy the community from those acts, said Tieger.
The prosecutor was responding to Karadzics closing arguments in the case, during which the 69-year-old former Bosnian Serb president denied the charges against him and called for an acquittal.
Tieger also argued that Karadzic worked tirelessly to make sure that the forced displacement of Bosniaks and Croats from territories under Serb control would be made permanent after a peace agreement was signed.
Karadzic wanted a permanent and clear division of Serbs from Bosniaks and Croats, he told the UN-backed court.
Karadzic was in favour of creating internal borders which would separate Serbs from the Bosniaks and Croats. Those borders would stop Bosniaks and Croats entering and changing the newly-created demographic situation, Tieger said.
The prosecutor argued that Karadzic had tried to manufacture a false narrative made up of unclear generalisations and lies about the massacres of 7,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica in 1995 in order to prove that he wasnt guilty of genocide.
These are not the failed attempts of an uneducated man, but of a man trying to hide the truth, Tieger said.
The former Bosnian Serb leader is charged with masterminding genocide in Srebrenica in 1995 and in seven Bosnian municipalities in 1992, the persecution of non-Serbs, terrorising the besieged population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
Prosecutors have demanded a life sentence.
The trial began in 2009 after Karadzic was arrested in Serbia and handed over to the Hague court following more than a decade on the run.
The verdict is expected to be delivered in the summer of 2015.
