In Trial, Karadzic Calls His Cause ‘Just and Holy’

[Adsos Letter]

Source: The New York Times
By ALAN COWELL and MARLISE SIMONS
Published: March 1, 2010

PARIS — Calling his cause “just and holy,” Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, began to testify in his own defense against charges of war crimes and genocide as his trial resumed in The Hague on Monday after a four-month delay.

Mr. Karadzic, 64, has rejected efforts by the United Nations war crimes tribunal to impose a lawyer on him and is conducting his own defense.

“I stand here before you not to defend the mere mortal that I am but to defend the greatness of a small nation in Bosnia — Herzegovina,” he said, according to television footage from The Hague.

“I don’t want to defend myself by saying that I was not important,” he said, adding: “I will defend that nation of ours and their cause, which is just and holy, and in that way I will be able to defend myself, too, and my name, because we have a good case.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/world/europe/02hague.html