prijava
PODGORICA/THE HAGUE, 6. maja (FENA) - Radovan Karadžić’s lawyer said the UN court has not yet taken any action against the former Bosnian Serb leader and genocide convict after he addressed a public debate in Montenegro by phone from prison.
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals has so far not taken any action to sanction Radovan Karadžić after he addressed a public discussion in Montenegro over the telephone from the UN Detention Unit in the Netherlands, his lawyer Peter Robinson told BIRN on Monday.
Former Bosnian Serb president Karadžić, who was convicted of genocide and other wartime crimes by the Hague court in March, addressed a public discussion in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica over the phone on Saturday.
Another Hague Tribunal war crimes convict, Momčilo Krajišnik, was a guest speaker at the debate at ‘Srpska kuća’ (Serbian House) in Podgorica.
Krajišnik told BIRN that he gave a lecture on the creation of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska in 1992 and other historical events “without bringing in politics and our unfortunate differences which exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
“Karadžić addressed them prior to my presentation. He mainly spoke about those differences and problems that exist in Montenegro, and about who was a Montenegrin and who was a Serb,” Krajišnik said.
He argued that “nothing bad happened” when Karadžić addressed the event.
Karadžić’s lawyer Robinson said that he had spoken to the former Bosnian Serb political leader about the incident, but due to professional confidentiality, he could not say whether or not Karadžić had asked the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals to allow him to use the phone for such a purpose, as required by the UN court’s detention rules.
Former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladić was sanctioned by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals over a similar incident last November, when he phoned in to take part in a live broadcast on Serbian television station Happy TV.
The court ruled that Mladić’s telephone calls should be monitored for a month.
Mladić’s lawyer Miodrag Stojanović said there was no difference between the two incidents.
“There is no difference because the [UN] Detention Unit rules are equal for all the inmates,” Stojanović told BIRN.
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals did not respond to BIRN’s request for a comment by the time of publication.
Karadžić was sentenced to life in prison for the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica, terrorizing the civilian population of Sarajevo with a long-running campaign of shelling and sniper attacks, the persecution and extermination of Bosniaks and Croats in 20 municipalities across the country, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
His request for an appeal was turned down last month, but he has asked for a review of the court’s decision.
(FENA) S. R.
