Judges at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal confirmed on Monday a new streamlined indictment against former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic that includes two genocide counts instead of one.
The new indictment covers the same allegations as the existing charge sheet but reduces the number of crime scenes from 41 to 27 in an attempt to speed up what is expected to be a lengthy trial.
Karadzic was first indicted in 1995, together with his former military chief General Ratko Mladic, for allegedly masterminding Serb atrocities against Muslims and Croats during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.
According to Monday’s decision, the first genocide count covers ethnic cleansing campaigns throughout Bosnia and the second refers only to the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre where Serb troops and paramilitaries rounded up and murdered some 8,000 Muslim men.
The mass summary execution at the Srebrenica UN-protected “safe haven” in eastern Bosnia was the worst single massacre on European soil since World War II.
Karadzic will be asked to enter pleas to the new indictment at a hearing on Friday. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.
He refused to enter pleas when he was brought before the tribunal’s judges last year after his arrest on a Belgrade bus in July ended 13 years on the run from international justice. The court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. No date has yet been set for his trial to begin.
Karadzic had appealed to judges to further cut down his indictment or risk a drawn-out case like that of his political mentor former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, whose trial lasted more than four years before being aborted when he died in his jail cell in 2006.
“This is the Tribunal’s first and best opportunity to demonstrate that it has learned the lessons of the Milosevic trial,” Karadzic wrote in a motion. “By approving only a limited amended indictment, the Trial Chamber will promote the interest of a fair and expeditious trial for all concerned.”
But in approving the new indictment, trial judges said they were satisfied the changes, “will not have an impact that could be considered significant upon the accused’s right to be tried without undue delay.”
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS