The first Republika Srpska President, Radovan Karadzic, is calm on the eve of a final verdict that will be handed down to him at The Hague on Wednesday, hoping for a positive outcome and believing that injustice inflicted on him will be corrected, reports the “Vecernje Novosti”.
One of Radovan Karadzic’s lawyers told N1 on the eve of the pronouncement of the second instance verdict against Radovan does not necessarily have to be the final verdict as both the defence as well as the prosecution have appealed.
“We don’t know what it will be. We expect the second instance court to decide on appeals by the prosecutor and the defence,” said Goran Petronijevic.
Petronijevic described the trial against Karadzic as “unjust,” saying that prosecutors have breached a number of rules when revealing evidence.
Karadzic himself is not thinking about the final verdict, but is, as always, putting together evidence that the defence did not have during the process, according to the lawyer.
“He (Karadzic) is expecting the verdict as an inevitable part of the process and he is not thinking about what it will be,” Petronijevic said.
The lawyer said that the Hague judicial council had an “unusually soft stance” towards the Prosecutor’s Office and its “immense breaching of rules in revealing evidence.”
The Prosecutor’s Office never proved any of the charges against Karadzic beyond a reasonable doubt, he said, explaining that “this is what we insist and base our optimism on.”
“Whether there are indications, certain pieces of evidence which go into the direction of confirming the indictment, that is another thing,” he explained.
“If that fact about the evidence is not consolidated beyond a level of reasonable doubt, then there can be no establishment of guilt,” he said.
Karadzic’s trial began in 2009 and lasted for 499 days. The court heard the testimonies of 586 witnesses, BIRN reported.
Source: N1/srna
