Karadzic skirmishes with UN court

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had his first skirmishes with the UN war crimes tribunal Thursday: He was cut short by the judge when he tried to protest his arrest, and put on notice that the prosecution will object to his demand to represent himself. At his initial court session, Karadzic also claimed his seizure and trial violated a deal he made with the United States in 1996 that the case against him would be scrapped if he left politics and did not undermine the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war. Karadzic appeared at a plea hearing one day after he was extradited from Serbia to the custody of UN authorities to answer genocide and war crimes charges for the murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats and for directing a reign of terror during the ethnic cleansing of the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He declined to enter a plea to the 11 charges against him, and told the judge he intended to act as his own attorney for the duration of the case. But prosecutor Alan Tieger asked the judge to caution Karadzic about the risks of conducting his own defense - an indication that the prosecution wanted to avoid a repeat of the much-criticized trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in jail in 2006 before his four-year trial ended.