Radovan Karadzic, With Help of God, to Go Pro Se at The Hague

[WSJ_law_blog]

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, left, and Gen. Ratko Mladic attend an assembly session in Pale, near Sarajevo, Bosnia. (AP Photo/Srdjan Ilic )


The big international legal news of the week is the recent arrest of Radovan Karadzic, who’s accused of genocide and other war crimes against Muslim and Croatian civilians during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990’s — particularly in connection with the 1995 slaughter of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, a small mountain town on the eastern border of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Karadzic, the president of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb Republic during the war, was first indicted thirteen years ago by prosecutors in The Hague.

Yesterday, a Serbian judge approved Karadzic’s extradition to The Hague, though his Serbian lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, said he plans to appeal the ruling by the Friday deadline. Karadzic’s trial may still be two years out. A judge at the U.N. tribunal yesterday said a trial wouldn’t start for “years.” (The delay could provide authorities with enough time to snag Ratko Mladic, the general of the Bosnian Serb army who allegedly orchestrated the massacres in both Srebrenica and Sarajevo, to stand trial with Karadzic.) But whenever the trial begins, Karadzic, 63, plans to appear pro se.

“He is going to have a legal team in Serbia but he will be defending himself (without a lawyer) during his trial at The Hague,” Vujacic, his Serbian lawyer, told the Irish Times. “He is convinced that with the help of God he will win.” Opposing him is Serge Brammertz, the U.N.’s chief prosecutor at The Hague.

The WSJ editorial board sounded off on the Karadzic prosecution in today’s paper.

The one dark lining is the prospect of “international justice.” . . . The last thing his victims deserve is a repeat of the [Slobodan] Milosevic case, which dragged on for five years and was ended, with no verdict in sight, by his fatal heart attack. We have a better idea. Try these men in Bosnia, where the crimes took place. It’s now a sovereign country with legitimate courts and EU aspirations in its own right. It would be the just thing to do.