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That’s Radovan Karadzic, former Bosnian leader, beginning his genocide defense.
I suppose this is the sort of thing anyone would say when facing the worst set of charges in Europe since the Nuremberg trials:
Prosecutors, who called more than 200 witnesses, say he bore responsibility for the bloody campaign to drive the Croat and Muslim population from parts of Bosnia, for the bloody three-year siege of Sarajevo and for his role in the mass murder of captive prisoners in Srebrenica.
My sense is that saying you don’t hate Muslims, that in fact you had a Muslim barber, is not likely to convince anyone that you didn’t play a high-level role in genocide.
Also not particularly helpful, but a tried-and-true ploy, is to deny that the genocide happened at all, which is another page in Karadzic’s defensive playbook:
Peter Robinson, an experienced American defense lawyer on the Karadzic team, said that Mr. Karadzic would argue that the mass executions could not be his responsibility because there was no such policy. In court on Tuesday Mr. Karadzic went further: ‘’There is no indication that anyone was killed by us at Srebrenica.”
While we can’t be sure of the outcome of the trial — though we can probably put forward an educated guess — we do know one thing for sure: It has already taken a long time and it’s likely to take an even longer time:
Acting as his own lawyer, while assisted by a court-financed team of attorneys and clerks, Mr. Karadzic said he would call 300 witnesses to prove his innocence and has demanded more time.
The court has reminded him that while prosecutors used 300 court hours to make their case and lead witnesses, Mr. Karadzic used more than 700 hours to cross-examine them during that period.
(via kohenari)