Defiant Karadzic boycotts genocide trial

Radovan Karadzic boycotted the start of his UN genocide trial yesterday, forcing an adjournment for a day as the judge accused the Bosnian Serb wartime leader of obstructing the process.

Despite an appeal from presiding judge O-Gon Kwon, his legal adviser said Mr Karadzic, who is conducting his own defence, planned to continue his boycott and would not be present when the trial resumes today in the afternoon.

Mr Karadzic, the political leader during Bosnia's 1992-95 war which left at least 100,000 dead and became notorious for the Srebrenica massacre and siege of Sarajevo, insists on more time to prepare his case.

Neither Mr Karadzic nor any of his legal advisers were present at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) when Judge Kwon started yesterday's hearing which lasted about 15 minutes.

Noting the absence, Judge Kwon adjourned the hearing for today and issued an appeal, to "again encourage Mr Karadzic to attend the proceedings."

But he also launched an early warning to Mr Karadzic, who was detained in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run, much of it spent disguised and working as an alternative healer.

"There are measures that can be taken should he continue to obstruct the progress of the trial," said the judge, including imposing a defence lawyer on the accused or proceeding in his absence.

After meeting Mr Karadzic in his jail cell, his legal adviser Marco Sladojevic said the former leader of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb republic would also shun the court today.

"He says that he will not appear tomorrow," Mr Sladojevic said yesterday. "He cannot be there because that would mean he participates in the start of a trial that he's not ready for."

Mr Karadzic says he needs more time to study a million pages of prosecution evidence and hundreds of witness statements.

Mr Sladojevic also stressed that Mr Karadzic "will never accept any imposed counsel" as demanded by prosecutor Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff, who argued it was the only way to stop his efforts to "frustrate the proceedings".

Survivors of the Bosnian war reacted angrily to yesterday's adjournment.

"It feels like they are being killed all over again," 62-year-old Munira Subasic, who lost loved ones in the July 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica, told journalists at the court.

In Sarajevo, survivors of the 44-month siege of the capital that ended in November 1995 with some 10,000 people killed, said they hoped the ICTY would jail Mr Karadzic for life.