Radovan Karadzic Asks for Release Before Final Verdict
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Radovan Karadzic asked the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday for a provisional release until his second-instance verdict is handed down in 2019 because the ruling, originally due this month, was postponed.
The postponement was caused by changes to the judging panel after the presiding judge, Theodor Meron, removed himself from the proceedings after Karadzic’s defence accused him of bias.
Karadzic’s defence also asked for the court’s appeals chamber to start deliberating the verdict again because of the changes to the judging panel, although the proceedings had already reached their final stage when Meron stepped down.
Confirming that the verdict in the Karadzic trial will be pronounced next year, judge Vagn Joensen called on the defence lawyers to present their request in a written motion.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found Karadzic guilty in March 2016 of genocide in Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Karadzic appealed against the verdict, but the Hague prosecution also filed an appeal asking for him to be found guilty of genocide in six other Bosnian municipalities and imprisoned for life.
