Karadzic to defend himself

BELGRADE  - Captured Bosnian Serb genocide suspect Radovan Karadzic is to defend himself before the UN war crimes court, his lawyer said Wednesday, raising memories of the trial of his late ally, Slobodan Milosevic. "Karadzic will have a legal team in Serbia that will help him with his defence but he will defend himself" at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Tanjug news agency quoted lawyer Svetozar Vujacic as saying. Earlier, Vujacic had said that he would file an appeal against Karadzic being sent to the ICTY, in a bid to postpone the transfer for as long as possible. "I will lodge the complaint on the last day of the deadline, on Friday (tomorrow). I do not think it will be adopted, but I will disrupt their plans to transfer him," Vujacic said on Tuesday. The 63-year-old disguised himself under flowing white hair, a thick beard, glasses and a white Panama hat, enabling him to move freely throughout Belgrade and several Serbian towns. As part of his alter ego, Karadzic even created a personal website - dragandabic.com - which tricked naturopaths and health writers into welcoming him into their domain. The online biography says he obtained a psychiatry diploma in Moscow, before "specialising in various methods of alternative medicine" in India and Japan. "The doctor returned to Serbia in the middle of the 1990s to become ... one of the most eminent experts in the field of alternative medicine," said the text on the webpage interspersed with photographs of the new-look Karadzic. Meanwhile, Karadzic's daughter appealed to the powerful international envoy to Bosnia to return the family's seized travel papers, and to allow them to visit him in a Belgrade prison cell. "I ask for Mr (Miroslav) Lajcak ... to enable our trip to Belgrade, since it is very likely the last chance to see my father," Sonja Karadzic-Jovicevic told AFP. "My mum is sick, and our financial situation is such that we could not afford to make a visit to The Hague". Karadzic faces 11 counts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and other atrocities before the UN tribunal. The charges are mainly related to two of Europe's worst atrocities since World War II, the 44-month siege of Sarajevo which killed more than 10,000 people and the Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys. In Bosnia's bitter inter-ethnic war, Karadzic is also said to have authorised so-called "ethnic cleansing" in which more than a million non-Serbs were driven from their homes. Karadzic's arrest means there are only two more fugitives of the UN court at large. They are his former military commander Ratko Mladic, 65, and Goran Hadzic, 49, a former Serb politician wanted for "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia.

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