Karadzic genocide trial to begin卡拉季奇种族灭绝罪的审判开始

（单词翻译）

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is due to go on trial on 11 charges including genocide（种族灭绝）, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Mr Karadzic denies the charges, which relate to the Bosnian war of the 1990s.

The 64-year-old was taken to the International Criminal Tribunal（法院） for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague last year, after 13 years in hiding.

On Thursday, Mr Karadzic said he would boycott¹ the hearing because he needed more time to prepare his defence.

"The biggest, most complex, important and sensitive case ever before this tribunal is about to begin without proper preparation," he warned.


The start date has already been put back twice, and his threat came after a request for a further 10-month delay was rejected（拒绝）.

In July, the court dismissed Mr Karadzic's appeal that the case be dropped because he said he had been offered immunity² from prosecution³ by former US mediator⁴ Richard Holbrooke in 1996 if he agreed to quit public life. Mr Holbrooke denies the claim.

Judges' options

Judges at The Hague insist the trial will begin as scheduled at 0800 GMT on Monday with the prosecution's opening statement.

But the BBC's Geraldine Coughlan at The Hague says it is unclear how they will proceed if Mr Karadzic does not appear in the dock.

Their options include suspending the trial, imposing⁵ counsel to represent him, starting without him, or forcing him to attend.

Relatives of Srebrenica victims arrive in the Netherlands
Mr Karadzic, who is defending himself, is not due to give his opening statement until next week. One of his lawyers, Peter Robinson, told Reuters news agency that he would boycott the trial until he was prepared.

The former president of Republika Srpska, head of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) and commander of the Bosnian Serb Army has refused to enter pleas, but says he will co-operate with the court to prove his innocence（无罪）.

He was indicted⁶ in 1995 on two counts of genocide and a multitude of other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians⁷ during the 1992-1995 war, which left more than 100,000 people dead.

The charges relate to several events, including the campaign of shelling and sniper attacks on Sarajevo during the 44-month siege of the city, in which some 12,000 civilians died.

Mr Karadzic is also accused of being behind the massacre⁸ of more than 7,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and youths in Srebrenica in July 1995, and of attacks on more than a dozen Bosnian municipalities in the early stages of the war.

"The prosecution alleges⁹ that Karadzic committed all of these crimes together with other members of a joint¹⁰ criminal enterprise with the aim to permanently¹¹ remove Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat inhabitants from the territories claimed to be a part of the so-called Serbian Republic," the ICTY said in a statement.

Correspondents（记者） say the judges want to complete the trial by 2012, conscious that the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ended without a verdict after four years when he died in custody¹².

Prosecutors（检察官） have abbreviated¹⁴ the scale of their case, which Mr Karadzic says depends on more than a million pages of testimony¹⁵, and will call fewer witnesses and include alleged¹⁶ crimes in fewer locations.

"This trial is important for the victims who will finally see justice being done," chief prosecutor¹³ Serge Brammertz told AFP news agency.

"When you speak to a woman who tells you that 21 members of her family have been assassinated¹⁷, and for some of them she even has no idea where the bodies are, you can easily measure the importance of this trial."

Mr Brammertz said his only regret was that the former Bosnian Serb military leader, Ratko Mladic, would not be in the dock on Monday.

When Mr Karadzic was found living disguised and under a false name in Belgrade in July 2008, some officials claimed that Gen Mladic would be next. But more than a year on, Gen Mladic is still at large. (本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑)