Karadzic: says he was promised immunity from prosecution.

Reuters/The Hague

War crimes prosecutors, concluding their case against former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic yesterday, called him the “driving force” in a genocidal campaign to rid Bosnia of its non-Serbian population.

Prosecutors are seeking the maximum penalty of life imprisonment against Karadzic, a leading political figure during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia that left 100,000 dead.

Karadzic rejected those allegations in a legal brief filed with the court yesterday afternoon, saying he had not been responsible for the killings.

In the document, filed two days before Karadzic is due to present his final arguments in court, he appealed to UN judges for leniency and said he had been promised immunity in exchange for stepping down as head of the Bosnian Serb republic in 1996.

Concluding four years of hearings, prosecutor Alan Tieger told judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that Karadzic had boasted at the time of his intentions to wipe out the non-Serb population.

Karadzic faces charges of genocide for the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica.

He is also held responsible for the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in which more than 5,000 civilians died.

 

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