The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal acquitted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Thursday of one of the two genocide charges he faces at the halfway stage of his long-running trial.
While the dismissal of the genocide charge was a setback for prosecutors, judges upheld 10 more charges, including a genocide count covering Mr. Karadzic’s alleged involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Judges said prosecutors did not present enough evidence to support the genocide count covering mass killings, expulsions and persecution by Serb forces of Muslims and Croats from Bosnian towns early in the country’s 1992-95 war.
Presiding Judge Oh-Gon Kwon said there was not enough evidence to “be capable of supporting a conviction of genocide in the municipalities.”
Prosecutors finished presenting their evidence in May and earlier this month Mr. Karadzic asked judges to dismiss all 11 counts against him, saying prosecutors had failed to prove them.
The court has repeatedly ruled that the massacre in Srebrenica was genocide, but has never convicted any suspect of genocide for the campaign of killings in Bosnian towns and villages at the outset of the war.
Mr. Karadzic was arrested in 2008, 13 years after he was first indicted on charges of masterminding Serb atrocities during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, which left 100,000 dead. His trial started in 2009.
Keywords: Karadzic genocide trial, Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, Bosnian war, Serb atrocities, Srebrenica massacre
I don't get it...why is the jewish news media still referring to Bosnians as Muslims and everyone else by their nationality rather than their religion after all these years? Are the jews trying to tell us something? Either way this was ugly. I remember the Jews in europe trying to block an EU and U.S intervention in Bosnia on the basis that the Bosnians "refused to kill the nazi germans" in 70 years ago in World War II. They were partially successful in their efforts and 250,000 people were murdered and the survivors lost their homes to the Serbs. And the so called UN and NATO 'peacekeepers' simply stood by and watched it happen. One thing is for sure, he won't be quickly executed before the trials are over, the way Saddam was. The difference is Saddam was directly instructed by U.S. and U.K to start a war and commit mass murder against Iranians and Kurds with Western-supplied chemical weapons and WMD's. The truth had to die with him before the end of all the trials.
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