Karadzic appears in Hague court



By Marlise Simons
Published: July 31, 2008

THE HAGUE: The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, shorn of the long hair and bushy beard that disguised him, appeared before the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Thursday for the first time to answer charges of genocide and war crimes.

Karadzic, who was transferred early Wednesday from Serbia to a jail cell near here, was gaunt and unsmiling. He was wearing a suit and tie, and listened silently as the charges against him were read out in the court.

Asked by the judge if were indeed Radovan Karadzic, he answered in Serbian simply, "I am."

Open to spectators and recorded by an official court camera, the hearing offered a first public glimpse of the man who evaded capture for 13 years, most recently hiding behind a disguise as a practitioner of alternative medicine.

Clean shaven and his white hair cut short and combed back neatly, Karadzic confirmed to the court that he intended to represent himself in the international tribunal here. As it progresses, the hearing may indicate how seriously he intends to take the court. A hint came Wednesday. After Karadzic's arrest on a bus last week in Belgrade, his brother told reporters repeatedly that lawyers were challenging the legality of his transfer to The Hague and had filed an appeal. But on Wednesday one of the lawyers admitted that no such step had ever been taken.

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Goran Petronijevic, a member of the Karadzic legal team, told reporters in Belgrade, Serbia's capital, that the account of an appeal being mailed from somewhere in Serbia had been a ruse to stall the extradition and to buy time for Karadzic's family to visit him in jail. The family did not see him, but it will be allowed to visit him in the tribunal jail.

With no appeal in hand, Serbian officials whisked Karadzic through Belgrade on Wednesday, hours after thousands of nationalists protested against his transfer to The Hague, and he was flown to Rotterdam.

He was then taken by a Dutch police helicopter inside the walls of the men's penitentiary in nearby Scheveningen. Within this compound, invisible from the road, the United Nations leases a modern independent cellblock, where about 40 inmates are held while facing charges of committing war crimes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

On his first day here on Wednesday, Karadzic was informed of his rights and examined by a doctor, according to a court official. At first, he will be kept separate from the other prisoners, among them Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, his former allies and foes, the official said.

In this jail, which holds people from three sides of violent political conflicts, newcomers are often isolated at the beginning to let them integrate slowly. Some are kept on separate floors to prevent them from colluding on evidence. Eventually Karadzic and others will be allowed to exercise together, play games and cook if they do not want jail food, lawyers familiar with jail procedures said.

Karadzic's trial is not expected to start for several months, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said Wednesday.

If Karadzic is found guilty of the charges in his indictment, which include crimes against humanity and genocide, he may face a life sentence. This tribunal has no death penalty. But he will not serve his sentence in the cellblock run by the United Nations as a temporary detention center. Other countries have set aside prison space for tribunal convicts.

For now, Karadzic will reside somewhere close to the cell where his former close ally, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, spent close to five years. Milosevic died here in 2006, before the end of his trial. While acting as his own lawyer, Milosevic was given an additional cell to keep his court documents.

Karadzic may be given the same amenities if judges permit him to represent himself,

He will also be able to receive visitors in public spaces that are monitored. Lawyers, close relatives, children and other select visitors can call at the jail every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Inmates can also reserve private space in one of three conjugal bedrooms. There are other perks, including newspapers in Serbo-Croatian, public pay phones in the halls and access to computers, which are not connected to the Internet. Because of the range of amenities, some Serbian news organizations have nicknamed the jail the Hague Hilton.

Karadzic, indicted in 1995, arrives at the busiest period in the history of the special tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Eight trials are under way, involving 27 defendants. Karadzic's presence here is now widely expected to prolong the life of the tribunal, which was scheduled to close in 2010.

That decision is up to the United Nations Security Council, which created the court in 1993, during the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

The name of Karadzic, like that of General Ratko Mladic, his military commander, who is still a fugitive, has long haunted the court and its successive prosecutors, who kept the fugitives' pictures on a wanted poster in their office. For Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down as prosecutor in December, the campaign for their capture was almost the main theme of her eight-year tenure.

During an interview before her departure in December, she said she had counted on getting custody of Mladic because he was widely known to be in Serbia. She said there had been many rumors, but few believable traces of Karadzic. In her memoirs, published in Italy this year, she wrote that the West had lost a number of chances to arrest him and said that she been naïve in believing assurances to her by the Central Intelligence Agency that his capture was a top priority.

Marlise Simons reported from The Hague. Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from Belgrade, and Graham Bowley from New York.