Analysis of Karadzic's Legal Strategy
Karadzic made his first appearance today for an arraignment. He deferred entry of his pleas, and indicated that he would represent himself. He is expected to plead not guilty to all charges.Karadzic's statements before the court forshadow his litigation strategy:
"According to (the offer from Richard Holbrooke) I had to withdraw from public life, I had to make certain gestures, and in return the U.S.A. would fulfill their commitments. This was on behalf of the United States of America."
"I believe this is very important for my fate and for my legal position. I want to show why I am appearing before this court only now, rather than in '96, '97 or '98, when I had the intention of appearing here, but at that time, I was in danger of being liquidated because I had made a deal that Mr. Holbrooke tried to honor."
"This is a matter of life and death. If Mr. Holbrooke still wants my death, and regrets that there is no death sentence here, I wonder if his arm is long enough to reach me here."
My analysis:
I happen to be a criminal prosecutor when I'm not working on this blog. Karadzic's claim is one of de facto immunity, where an accused asserts that they took action to their detriment in reliance upon a promise not to prosecute them.
Karadzic will be entitled to call Mr. Holbrooke as a witness. He can call other witnesses, if there are any, to try to bolster this claim of a grant of immunity.
The burden is on Karadzic to clearly prove the existence of such an agreeement. When Mr. Holbrooke takes the stand and says that none existed, Karadzic has not met his burden. Based on everything the Karadzic family has talked about regarding Mr. Holbrooke over the last several years, there are no witnesses to this conversation between Holbrooke and Karadzic.
So, Karadzic loses this motion about immunity.
The best thing he could do for himself would be to cobble together a experienced team of criminal defense attorneys to attack the evidence and witnesses on the 11 charges. If not, Karadzic's immunity motion will quickly fail and evidence against Karadzic will be enough to overwhelmingly establish his guilt on most of the charges.
posted by Balkan Ghost @ 5:34 PM
8 Comments:
I had my suspicions that something like that had happened. But these childish statements from Karadzic completely disprove that.
But I can see how this lie will get a mythical life of its own in the far left websites and among Serbs.
He wanted to go to The Hague but was afraid of Holbrooke? Nigga plz!
Dear Editor,
Please use photo of Karadzic posted on my blog. It's a close up of his gaunt and tired. Visibly shaken, he appears to have cried. Take a look:
http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2008/07/radovan-karadzic-court-appearance-gaunt.html
Ops! Sorry for fragmented sentece above. I am in a hurry! You should also consider moderating comments to avoid Serb nationalist spamming and posting objectionable material without your knowledge.
Several days ago you voiced your concerns about a possible assassination attempt on Karadzic. Primarily you considered it to be unsafe for him to remain in Belgrade. Well, this episode is over. However, apparently K. voiced some concerns about his safety during his first appearance in the Hague. I am far from being a conspiracy-theorist, but it appears to be worthwhile to examine, whether there might be forces who would prefer a dead K. (preferably before the trial kicks-off) to a living one.
In no particular order, following parties spring to mind:
1. KOSTUNICA: Obviously K. has been sheltered by the previous Kostunica-government. Kostunica might want to prevent K. spilling the beans in the Hague and therefore will try to silence him.
2. THE FRENCH - they furnished K. with Intel over a prolonged period of time, not only spoiling NATO-operations but also putting allied soldiers into serious risks, This would almost certainly be an issue during a trial and might seriously embarrass the Grande Nation which is currently desperate to regain a place as a major player within NATO. A forthcoming K in the dock might seriously put these ambitions at risk.
3. MLADIC and his supporting network - a K.-trial might further implicate the fat guy and bring to light background info on the workings of the top political-military decision making of the Bosnian Serbs. K might also have knowledge of M's whereabouts.
4. SERB-NATIONALISTS - a dead K. will turn into a hero/martyr. They also might want to prevent embarrassing pictures similar to Saddam in captivity. Only a dead K. will be beneficial to the nationalist course - not a jailed pseudo-guru.
5. SOME AMERICAN CIRCLES - This is based on the presumption, that there really was a secret deal between the Holbrook and K., in so far that the US would not seriously hunt down K, if he refrained from political activity. This has been claimed repeatedly by several sources. If K. has any proof for this, it might dent the American image and credibility even more.
6. THE KARADZIC SUPPORT NETWORK - everybody who was actively involved in sheltering him. They are now in serious risk of being disclosed and pursued themselves.
7. BOSNIACS-NATIONALISTS – for obvious reasons. They might not want to put their trust into flimsy judicial procedures. If the possibilities arises, K. might be toast.
Is it likely to happen? I don’t know, but things like that have been achieved before … In my mind, the fact K. wants to represent himself in court might indicate, that he trusts nobody and doesn't want to disclose a single titbit of information beforehand. He will keep his cards close to his chest, which will frighten the above mentioned parties even more.
I like those 7 points of terms for good old K. I think the theory is, i've got nothing to lose now, everyon ehas ratted on me, so f**k them all. Let them all go down and let the world know.
The only thing i am interested in is that the Hague may block certain information if it is all true and we will not know what is happening - so the strings will still be pulled.
What's everyone's problem with Karadzic? It was not he who vowed to "sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina" - Alija Izetbegovic did that. At Nuremberg, the principle was set that he who starts the war bears responsibility for it. That responsibility belongs to Alija Izetbegovic.
So people will cite Karadzic's "threats" when Izetbegovic threatened to carry out a coup d'etat - he carried it out anyway at 3 am that night believing that the Americans would rescue him because Warren Zimmerman told him so. He was the one who openly chose to gamble with the lives of "his" people, carrying out a blatantly illegal coup d'etat...
Remember the reports of how Belgium could not elect a government after months and months and the issue of the Lebanese government? These issues have to do with the systems of government there where ethnic groups must be represented in government and can veto measures that threaten their vital interests.
BiH had (and continues to have under Dayton) the same system and yet the world flocked to recognise a government that was illegal according to the BiH constitution and recognised a completely illegal secession... those who carried out that secession are to blame for the war, not those who were enforcing their rights, led as they were by Karadzic.
He should be congratulated for not submitting to a fait-accompli cooked upl by interfering powers trying to prove that as George H.W. Bush said,"what we say goes...in this New World Order we are trying to create...and we mean it!"
Balkan Ghost, since you're a prosecutor could you please expand a bit more on the legal aspects of "de facto immunity"? The accused asserts that he took action to his own detriment in reliance upon a promise not to prosecute him. Does the promise of immunity have to come from someone legally entitled to give such assurances (e.g. a prosecutor or other official of the court), or can it come from someone with a claim to have indirect influence over the court (e.g. the mayor, an alderman etc.)... or would a verbal promise of immunity from the Tooth Fairy qualify?
Even if Richard Holbrooke made such a promise, and even if there were witnesses or other compelling evidence to confirm that said promise was in fact made, Holbrooke does not meet the criteria for the first category. Holbrooke. as the alleged promise-maker. had no authority to make committments on behalf of the United Nations or the U.N. war crimes tribunal, nor was he in a position to give ICTY prosecutor Goldstone direct marching orders.
On the other hand, Holbrooke wasn't quite in the Tooth Fairy category either -- at that time he was a high official of the US government engaged in a diplomatic mission and unless Holbrooke was acting on his own initiative, Karadžić would have some justification in assuming that the American diplomat was speaking for the United States -- which as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council has a certain degree of influence over the ICTY, even if it is not entitled to give the Hague prosecutors direct orders.
The reason I ask is that -- even if the document with the terms of the alleged "Karadžić-Holbrooke deal" that has been published in the Serbian press turns out to be a fake -- there may be willing to testify in court to the deal. Among those who are said to have been present when the immunity deal was concluded were Slobodan Milošević, Karadžić's "foreign minister" Aleksa Buha, and Momčilo Krajišnik. Sloba is no longer with us, but Buha and Krajišnik are both alive and may be willing to testify.
Although we have "smoking gun" so far, I believe it's quite likely that Holbrooke did actually make some sort of promise to Karadžić (verbal, to preserve deniability), guaranteeing that US peacekeeping troops in Bosnia would not arrest him. And the fact is that US troops in Bosnia had no orders to arrest Karadžić -- as their commander at the time, Gen. William Nash. has recently admitted in an interview -- and they did not in fact lay hands on the accused, despite numerous chances to do so.
Such a commitment on the part of Holbrooke would have amounted to obstruction of justice, possibly contempt of court, and certainly a breach of the solemn obligations of the US, as a UN member state, to respect the arrest orders of the ICTY. Assuming all that was actually the case, would it go as far as giving Karadžić de facto immunity from prosecution?
Thanks for any light you can shed on this matter.
AR
"possible assassination attempt on Karadzic"
If only we were so lucky that an attempt would be made and succeed....this guy is nothing more than a modern day hitler...a lame, inept, copy perhaps...but a copy all the same. It's unfortunate The Hague does NOT have the DP....but then I'll be happy to pull the trigger myself
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