Karadzic: "Sarajevo will be a black cauldron where Muslims will die"

 

 

Karadzic: "Sarajevo will be a black cauldron where Muslims will die"

via Islam in Europe by Esther on 31/10/09

Karadzic: "Sarajevo will be a black cauldron where Muslims will die"

RADOVAN Karadzic led a genocidal campaign to make Bosnian Muslims "disappear from the face of the earth" and carve out a mono-ethnic state for Bosnian Serbs, war crimes prosecutors told a UN tribunal yesterday.

In opening statements, prosecutors painted a picture of the former Bosnian Serb leader as a supreme commander single-mindedly pursing a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" during the 1992-95 Bosnian war that killed an estimated 100,000 people.


They spo to empty chairs on the defendant's side of the court as Karadzic, who denies all the charges, boycotted the trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for a second day.

"The Supreme Commander explained in October 1991 what was coming: 'Sarajevo will be a black cauldron where Muslims will die. They will disappear … from the face of the earth'," the senior prosecutor, Alan Tieger, cited Karadzic as saying in an intercepted call. He was referring to the 43-month siege of Sarajevo that began in 1992 and killed an estimated 10,000 as the former Yugoslavia was torn apart by Serbs, Croats and Muslims fighting for land.

"The supreme commander had directed his forces in a campaign to carve out a mono-ethnic state within his multi-ethnic country," Mr Tieger said. "This case is about that supreme commander. A man who harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to implement his vision of an ethnically separated Bosnia – Radovan Karadzic."

As prosecutors began their case yesterday, Biljana Plavsic, Karadzic's successor as Bosnian Serb president, left a Swedish prison and arrived in Belgrade after winning early release from her sentence for committing war crimes.

Karadzic, 64, has denied 11 war-crimes charges arising from the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, including two charges of genocide for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and for broader atrocities.

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Source: The Scotsman (English)