Committee: ICJ
Country: Alan Tieger
Topic Area A: The Karadzic Trial
Radovan Karadzic, the one-time Bosnian Serb leader, was brought to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on eleven charges of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity for his actions during the Bosnian war in 1992-1995. Defending himself, Karadzic denies all the charges. He is known by some as the “modern-day Hitler” because of his alleged campaigns to clean out Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Muslim ethnicity. Karadzic is charged with two counts of genocide by ordering and planning the killings, torture, and abuse of Bosnian Muslims; one count of persecutions by ordering autocratic searches, arrests, and destruction; three counts of extermination and murder for the 10,000 people killed during a 44 month siege of Sarajevo, and the total extermination of boys and men in Srebrenica; two counts of deportation and inhumane acts for the expulsion of Muslims (mainly women) from their homes and the harsh treatment of people who were allowed to stay; two charges for terror, and unlawful attacks which constitute the killings, maiming, wounding, and terrorizing of thousands of civilians in both Sarajevo and Srebrenica; one count for the taking of hostages for the abduction of more than 200 UN peacekeepers and military observers to prevent NATO from entering Bosnia. The two main viewpoints of this case are in fact the two extremes. Most observers believe that Karadzic is guilty of all charges with enough physical proof, such as intercepted phone calls and more than 150 prosecution witnesses (still 50 left), to show that he was in charge of the “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the other hand, Karadzic feels that the acts were directed at certain dangerous individuals, who happened to be Muslim, for the well being of the Bosnian people.
