The war crimes trial of Radovan Karadzic will go ahead as planned, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said Wednesday, refusing to be bound by an alleged immunity deal between the Bosnian Serb wartime leader and US negotiator Richard Holbrooke.
The court did not accept Karadzic's assertion that it was bound by the agreement he claims to have made with Holbrooke - architect of the Dayton peace accords that halted the Bosnian conflict - in July 1965, under which he would enjoy immunity from prosecution in return for disappearing from the public eye, it said.
Holbrooke, now US President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, has repeatedly denied making any such deal on behalf of the UN Security Council which set up the tribunal in The Hague. The court's ruling Wednesday is in line with a submission made in June by the prosecution that "even if the alleged agreement exists ... it could not be legally binding before this tribunal."
Karadzic, 64, was arrested in Belgrade in July last year after 13 years on the run. He faces 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, which he denies. The charges relate mainly to his role in the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 people dead, and the July 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica - Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
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