Powerful Team Backs Up Karadzic’s ‘Invisible Ally’

More than 30 attorneys, legal experts and trainees make up the legal support team for Radovan Karadzic as he faces the grave charges put forward by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY. All but seven, paid for by the ICTY, are involved pro bono, and claim they receive nothing for their work.

Asked why he involved himself in the case, Peter Robinson, legal advisor with remarkable biography, said his job was to “make sure that the indictees have a fair trial… The more an indictee is criticized and unpopular, the more help he needs,” Robinson told BIRN`s Justice Report.

Other members of the international team, mostly international law experts, give the same reasons. Australian professor Kevin Jon Heller opened a blog in which he shares observations on the trial preparations. He also published an ad inviting young legal experts to apply to join the team. According to him, they would be engaged in an “historic trial, the biggest since the end of World War Two”. More than one hundred applied, only a few of whom were selected.

Besides the international lawyers, a team of attorneys from Bosnia and Serbia is also helping Karadzic.

Together, they have been very active over the past year that Karadzic has spent in the ICTY detention unit in Scheveningen. They have filed numerous motions, besides sending requests to international organizations and governments, primarily for witnesses who would be able to testify about an alleged immunity agreement Karadzic struck with the US Balkan mediator Richard Holbrooke.

More than 400 different motions have been filed with the Tribunal alone. Most were apparently rejected. However, the analysts still sees their actions as a partial success, because by delaying the start of trial, they have won more time.

Observers say one reason why they want to postpone the trial for as long as possible is out of a hope that the UN Security Council might refuse to extend the Tribunal’s mandate in the meantime. As matters stand, as per the latest decisions of the Security Council, the mandate of ICTY judges lasts until the end of 2010 “or the completion date of the remaining trials”.

According to current estimates, the trial may begin some time in September.

Not invisible for long:

Karadzic, then styling himself Dragan Dabic, was arrested on a bus in Belgrade on July 21, 2008. Ten days later he was transferred to the ICTY detention unit and he soon appeared before a judge. At the start, he said he intended to defend himself, adding that a higher force stood behind him.

“I have an invisible ally,” Karadzic said. “I consider the Hague Tribunal as a natural disaster from which I shall defend myself on my own”. The judges advised him to make use of a team of experts. He refused, on several occasions, but now has one of the biggest teams taking part in a trial before the Tribunal.

According to Peter Robinson, the Tribunal Registry allowed Karadzic to recruit eight people, including Goran Petronijevic, coordinator of the defence team, Marko Sladojevic, trial preparations coordinator, and five others, including three investigators. Their hourly fees range from 15 to 35 euros.

“The Tribunal pays for Dr Karadzic’s defence. The cost is much less than the usual cost, because he represents himself and the Tribunal does not have to pay anyone 97 euros per hour, which is the usual fee,” Robinson said.

Prior to becoming involved in Karadzic case, Robinson was engaged in the trial of Dragoljub Ojdanic, who was sentenced in 2009 to 15 years for crimes in Kosovo. Besides that, he was an Assistant Chief Prosecutor in the US Robinson has also authored a thriller, Tribunal, about a fictional attorney who comes to The Hague to defend a Serb indicted for war crimes in Bosnia.

Besides him, the team includes several well established law professors, such as Kevin Jon Heller, Goran Sluiter, Alexander Zahar, Gideo Boas, Kate Gibson, as well as Andreas O’Shea. Other team members include Stefan Kirsch, from Germany, whose task is to request documents from governments. Emmanuel Altit comes from France and Diana Ellis from Britain.

Zahar has been working in The Hague as a legal counselor for a long time. Sluiter is a law professor at university in Amsterdam and judge of a district court in Utrecht. He has written several books on international law. Boas, a law professor who has worked as legal counselor with the ICTY for a long time, was engaged as legal advisor to the Trial Chamber in the Slobodan Milosevic trial. He has been active in the field of human rights as well.

Andreas O’Shea is engaged in the team helping the indicted leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj. He worked with the International Criminal Court, ICC, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Court for Rwanda and elsewhere.

“There are other people working on a pro bono basis, determining the facts under the leadership of Goran Petronijevic. They work in Belgrade and Bosnia,” Robinson explained.

“People can become members of this team in various ways. For instance, Goran Petronijevic contacted me after Dr Karadzic decided to have me as member of his team, considering that I was familiar with the way the Tribunal functioned. Prior to becoming involved in this case, I was involved in another case conducted before this Tribunal and another one before the Rwanda Tribunal,” Robinson added.

Kevin Jon Heller has been working on a book on “International prosecutors from Nurnberg to the Hague” for years. As previously mentioned, Heller has opened a blog on preparations for the Karadzic trial. In one post, he described his first meeting with his new client.

“I must admit I was not sure what to expect, considering all those media reports about this man. However, as soon as I met him I felt relieved, when I saw his simple clothes, warm smile and blue plastic bag with drinks, snacks and documents.

“We shook hands. I introduced myself. He said he was happy to have me on his team, adding that he appreciated my work. He then gave Peter (Robinson) a Fanta, his favourite drink, offering me a choice between an orange soda and a Coke.”

Professor Heller continued that Karadzic seemed calm, adding that he was impressed by his intelligence, good knowledge of English and international politics.

Last November, Professor Heller published an ad, inviting young lawyers to join “a trial that may become the biggest war crime trial since the Nurnberg and Tokyo processes”. In his blog, Heller explained that he himself joined the team because he believed each indictee deserved a good defence. “The graver the charges, the more needed the good defence is,” he said.

“I am honored to be involved in such an important case. Indeed, given the stakes, I think “how could you defend Radovan Karadzic?” is the wrong question. The better question, I believe, is how could I not?” he wrote.

The 1996 legal team:

Karadzic’s first legal team at The Hague appeared back in 1996, years before his actual arrest. Its composition was different from today.

According to a New York Times article, in June 1996, attorney Igor Pantelic arrived in The Hague “to check whether the Tribunal did everything in line with the rules”. After that, US attorneys Edward Medvene and Thomas Hanley also arrived.

In his interview with the New York Times, Medvene said Karadzic wanted “Western countries to know that he was eager to prove his innocence”, adding that he was ready to be tried, but only after the Tribunal’s rules were changed. “At present (the Tribunal) is biased and unfair,” Medvene said. Karadzic was not arrested and extradited for another 12 years.

Since then there have been media reports that William Ramsey Clark, from the US, and Jacques Verges from France had joined Karadzic’s team. Both were members of Milosevic’s legal team. Their names are not mentioned in the official list of Karadzic team. However, their biographies, which can be found on the Internet, indicate that they act as Karadzic’s advisors. Clark, a former US State Prosecutor, won the Gandhi prize for peace. Besides Milosevic, the two men advised former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein while Verges represented Klaus Barbie, who was charged with war crimes committed the Second World War, as well as Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as The Jackal.

Christopher Black, an attorney and political activist from Toronto, is another member of the old team. He was member of Milosevic’s team as well. Like the two previously mentioned advisors, he was engaged in preparing the Serbian law suit against NATO for the bombing campaign of 1999. He is an assistant in Seselj’s team.

Robinson said the legal team was preparing intensively. “The scope of the case is enormous, including events over a 4 year period in 27 municipalities, and separate charges for Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and the taking of UN personnel hostage. The prosecution has provided the defence with over 1 million pages of material to study and has 530 witnesses on its witness list and 23000 pages of exhibits on its exhibit list.“
“We are still familiarizing ourselves with the case. It is premature to speak about our witnesses,” he added.

Robinson declined any questions pertaining to Karadzic personally, because, he said, “the Tribunal strictly forbids us from doing that.

“It is a pity that they do not allow Dr Karadzic to establish direct communication with journalists, because I am sure that his answers would be more interesting than mine,” Robinson concluded.

Nidzara Ahmetasevic is BIRN – Justice Report editor. [email protected] Justice Report is BIRN weekly online publication.