Karadzic's Boycott Delays Genocide Trial

U.N. judges abruptly adjourned Radovan Karadzic's war crimes trial Monday after the former Bosnian Serb leader boycotted the opening day to protest his lack of time to prepare his defense.

Judge O-Gon Kwon said that in the absence of Karadzic, who was defending himself, or any lawyer representing him, he was suspending the case until Tuesday afternoon, when the prosecution would begin its opening statement.

It was not immediately clear what would happen if Karadzic again boycotts the trial on Tuesday. Prosecutor Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff urged judges to appoint a defense attorney to represent Karadzic whether he likes it or not, saying he should not be able to deliberately hold up the trial.

Karadzic, who was one of the central figures of the Balkan wars triggered by the breakup of Yugoslavia, faces two counts of genocide and nine other charges or war crimes and crimes against humanity, in the most important case since the incompleted trial of his former mentor, Slobodan Milosevic. The former Yugoslav president died during his trial 2006.

The suspension brought cries of anguish and anger from the small public gallery that was packed with survivors of the war and media.

Admira Fazlic, who was imprisoned in Bosnian Serb-run camps during the conflict, shook her head as she left the courtroom.

"We are shocked," she said. "Radovan Karadzic is making the world and justice ridiculous. He is joking with everybody."

Observers say that the 64-year-old Karadzic's absence from Courtroom One at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal should not overshadow the case's significance. Karadzic's trial is seen as a chance for the tribunal to make amends for Milosevic's ill-fated trial, which dragged on for four years before his fatal heart attack.

Karadzic's genocide charges stem from the 1995 murder of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica and a from the Bosnian Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing against the country's Muslim and Croat populations.

Karadzic, who evaded capture for 13 years, has repeatedly refused to enter pleas, but insists he is innocent. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted at his trial.

Seeing Karadzic finally face justice is enormously significant to victims who still cannot put to rest their memories of the horrors, said the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Belgian Serge Brammertz.

He recalled meeting a woman who lost 21 family members in the war and still has not found all their bodies.

The war left more than 100,000 dead, most of them victims of Bosnian Serb attacks.

Survivors revile Karadzic as the man whose political dream of creating an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia" triggered the Srebrenica massacre - Europe's worst bloodbath since World War II - and the notorious campaign of sniping and shelling that turned Bosnia's picturesque capital Sarajevo into a killing field.

Karadzic worked hard to avoid facing justice. He says he cut a deal with U.S. peace envoy Richard Holbrooke in 1996 in which he agreed to drop out of public life in return for immunity from prosecution. Holbrooke denies making such a deal and tribunal judges say it would not be binding on them.

His whereabouts was unknown for years until his arrest last year when he was posing as New Age healer Dr. Dragan Dabic, disguised behind thick glasses, a bushy beard and straggly gray hair.

Prosecutors wanted to try Karadzic together with his wartime military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, but Mladic remains on the run, one of only two suspects still sought by the court. The other is a former leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, Goran Hadzic.