Ex-Bosnian Serb leader: Alleged war crimes are myths

March 3, 2010

Radovan Karadzic, the wartime ex-Bosnian Serb leader, told judges in The Hague, Netherlands earlier today that alleged atrocities of the Serbian 1992–95 war were "myths," and denied having had any involvement.

In comments to the court, Karadzic said that murder of seven thousand Muslims in Srebrenica, as well as the siege in Sarajevo, was staged or made up in order to demean the Serbs.

Karadzic, aged 64, has been charged with eleven counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. He is accused of being behind the Sarajevo siege, when the city was shelled for 44 months.

The former leader described the deaths of the Sarajevo residents as being part of "cunning strategy" by Bosnian Muslims to bring in "foreign troops and foreign intervention", saying that "they shelled their own people and killed their own people from snipers."

"It is going to be easy from me to prove that I had nothing to do with it," Karadzic said.

Reaction from survivors of Srebrenica was indignant, according to reports. "He should be given the Nobel Prize for lying," remarked Sabra Kolenovic of the Mothers of Srebrenica.