In absentia, Karadzic blamed for ’95 Srebrenica massacre

Karadzic again boycotted his own trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, but pledged in a letter to judges that he would attend a procedural hearing today on his defense.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger focused on Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II as he wound up his opening statement yesterday for the tribunal’s judges. Tieger called the July 1995 slaying in Srebrenica “one of humanity’s dark chapters’’ and laid the blame squarely at Karadzic’s feet.

“The murder of these men and the expulsion of the women, children, and elderly did not arise from nowhere,’’ Tieger said. “These crimes were the culmination of the accused’s determination to cleanse eastern Bosnia to ensure the Serb state he envisioned.’’

Karadzic is charged with two counts of genocide and nine other crimes against humanity and war crimes linked to atrocities throughout Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.

Karadzic has refused to enter pleas, but insists he is innocent. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Tieger showed judges photos of men’s bodies exhumed from mass graves near Srebrenica - one wearing a blindfold, another with his hands bound behind his back - and video of bodies piled up along the white, bullet-pocked wall of a warehouse.

He showed video of a captured Muslim man calling to his son to come and join him. Both father and son, Tieger said, were found dead in mass graves.

“These terrible crimes have been proved time and again in other trials before this tribunal,’’ Tieger said. “When [Karadzic] denies what happened, it is because he knows that the truth condemns him.’’

Tieger repeatedly referred to Karadzic as the “supreme commander’’ of Bosnian Serb forces and told judges the chain of command was functioning perfectly during the Srebrenica massacre. That was an apparent attempt to address a possible Karadzic line of defense - that any crimes in Bosnia happened without his knowledge or consent.

Karadzic’s boycott of the trial last week frustrated dozens of war survivors - many of them widows from Srebrenica - who had traveled hundreds of miles by bus to see him face justice after 13 years on the run.

The 64-year-old wrote to judges that he would attend today’s hearing to help find “a solution which will lead to not only an expeditious trial, but a fair one.’’

Karadzic says that he did not have enough time to prepare his defense, despite having been first indicted in 1995 and arrested 14 months ago on a Belgrade bus, disguised as a New Age healer. Since then, he has been working on his defense in his cell at the tribunal’s detention center.

Karadzic insists he needs up to eight more months to be ready for his trial, and wants to defend himself.