KARADZIC TESTIFIES IN KRAJISNIK APPEAL

KARADZIC TESTIFIES IN KRAJISNIK APPEAL
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - November 10, 2008

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

THE HAGUE (Wednesday, November 5, 2008) - Former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic appeared as a defense witness in an appeals hearing for former Bosnian-Serb parliament speaker Momcilo Krajisnik last Wednesday.

The full scope of Karadzic's testimony is unknown because the Tribunal required the defense's evidence be given in the form of a written statement which is essentially inaccessible to the public.

What the public was able to see was prosecutor Alan Tieger's cross-examination of Dr. Karadzic. Although Tieger's questions were supposed to focus on the acts and conduct of Momcilo Krajisnik, the prosecutor used his 90-minute cross-examination to try and get Karadzic to incriminate himself. The strategy failed. The International Herald Tribune reported that "Karadzic largely avoided any incriminating slips."

Indeed, many of the prosecution's questions went unanswered. The Tribunal assigned an American lawyer named Peter Robinson to assist Karadzic. Mr. Robinson objected to the prosecutor's questions on many occasions saying at one point that they were "so far afield from what you are supposed to be interested in in this hearing. It is nothing more than a transparent attempt to use (Karadzic's) answers against him at his own trial" The judges sustained Robinson's objections and the prosecutor was forced to ask other questions.

The prosecutor asked several questions related to a document entitled "Instructions for the Organization and Activity of Organs of the Serbian People in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Extraordinary Circumstances" (also known as "Variant A and B") which had been distributed at a meeting of the SDS in 1991. According to the document, crisis staffs were to seize power in municipalities where the Serbs were in a majority (Variant A) or to form parallel institutions where they were not (Variant B).

Karadzic explained that, "We allowed the document to circulate, but this was not our document. It was not looked at by the organs (of the SDS). It was not discussed. It was not adopted. It was simply an expert opinion proffered by officers who had witnessed the genocide in 1941 and who considered that the people should not be left without any defensive measures."

Even if it had been an official document of the SDS, Karadzic explained that "the authorities on the ground did not follow the instructions of the party because the state apparatus was not party based. People who were in key positions in the municipalities were not party members. And the municipalities as units had their powers in the sphere of defence, Territorial Defence, as part of the All Peoples Defence and social self-protection which was the defense doctrine during Tito's Yugoslavia."

Next the prosecutor questioned Karadzic on the strategic goals of the Republika Srpska, which had been set out in a document in May 1992 as follows: the demarcation of Republika Srpska as separate from the Croatian and Muslim entities, a corridor between Semberija and Krajina, the elimination or softening of the Drina river as a border between the Serbs in Bosnia and the Serbs in Serbia, the partition of Sarajevo, and finally access to the sea.

Karadzic explained that the strategic goals outlined in the document were what had been proposed in the Cutileiro plan (also known as the Lisbon Agreement) by the European Community. He said, "We were promised a republic by the European Community, within the frameworks of the Cutileiro Plan and the conference for Yugoslavia. What we achieved is what we were given and promised in exchange for stepping down from Yugoslavia."

He said, "Republika Srpska was created before we had the army ... [it] was created when it was offered to us by the E.C." He explained that "The army defended what we received from the E.C. when all three sides accepted the Lisbon Agreement."

Karadzic was quick to point out the central flaw in the case against the Bosnian Serbs, namely that the Muslims provoked the war by signing and then withdrawing their signature from the Lisbon Agreement. He said, "had the war not occurred, and everyone accepted the Lisbon Agreement, then this would all have been moot."

It wasn't until Krajisnik and his attorney Nathan Dershowitz (Alan Dershowitz's brother), were able to re-examine Karadzic that the proceedings turned to matters directly related to the acts and conduct of Krajisnik -- after all this was his appeals hearing.

Karadzic explained that throughout the term of the indictment against Krajisnik (March-December 1992) that the Bosnian-Serb presidency was made-up of three people: Biljana Plavsic, Nikola Koljevic, and Radovan Karadzic.

The tribunal, in its judgment against Krajisnik found that he was a member of the presidency on the basis of minutes taken during Bosnian-Serb presidency meetings. Karadzic explained that Krajisnik's presence at those meetings did not make him a member of the presidency. He said that he was invited to attend the presidency meetings in order to inform the presidency about the status of legislation in the assembly, but that he did not have a vote in the presidency's decisions.

When Karadzic was asked what role Krajisnik played in the government he explained what the speaker of the Assembly's job was. He said, Mr. Krajisnik "didn't really have any powers or authority whatsoever, MPs would propose a bill, the Presidency would process it, and then Mr. Krajisnik would put it on the parliamentary agenda."

Dershowitz asked, "Did Mr. Krajisnik ever make any comments encouraging, advocating, suggesting ethnic cleansing, the movement of civilian populations, the murder of Muslims or Croats or any of these other war crimes that he's been charged with?"

Karadzic responded, "Absolutely not. The Muslims themselves, asked that Mr. Krajisnik always be on the negotiating team because they had a good understanding."

Dershowitz asked, "was Mr. Krajisnik in a position to issue orders as a member of SDS?" and Karadzic said, "Absolutely not. He was not able to do that, nor did he do so."

The last question that Dershowitz asked was, "Was he in any way involved in the military operations either by being in a command position, an authority position, or right to issue any orders as it applied to the military part of what was going on at that time?" Karadzic's response was "Absolutely not."

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