Court Rejects Karadzic Request for Clinton Subpoena Judges accuse defendant of point-scoring and publicity-see ing.

By Rachel Irwin - International Justice - ICTY TRI Issue 753, 24 Aug 12 Judges in The Hague this wee rejected a request from wartime Bosnian Serb presi dent Radovan Karadzic to subpoena former United States president Bill Clinton, c alling it a trial tactic designed to score political points and garner media atten tion. In a written subpoena request on July 9, Karadzic claimed that President Clinton did not object to Croatia transferring shipments of weapons from other countrie s to the Bosnian Muslims. This was, Karadzic said, in direct violation of the Unit ed Nations arms embargo in effect at the time. The defendant also stated that a delegation which Clinton sent to Bosnia in Augu st 1995 informed Bosnian Muslim leaders that if peace tal s failed, the US was p repared to offer direct military assistance to them and the Bosnian Croats. Karadzic claimed that this offer was the pretext for the second mortar attac on S arajevos Mar ale mar et on August 28, 1995, which illed 34 people and injured 78 . He accuses the Bosnian government of carrying out the attac . Tribunal judges in the trial of one of Karadzics generals, Dragomir Milosevic, found in 2007 that it was committed by the Bosnian Serb army. Karadzic as ed for the subpoena after the US government rejected an attempt to s ecure Clintons voluntary participation in May 2012. In their August 21 decision, judges rejected Karadzics request and criticised his approach. They said subpoenas should be a method of last resort when information is not ob tainable by any other means, and if it is deemed absolutely necessary to the pre paration of the trial. This chamber has already held that the involvement of the UN member states, inclu ding the US, in the alleged arms smuggling into [Bosnia] is irrelevant and unnec essary to the purposes of this trial, the judges wrote. The bench also expressed concern about the way Karadzic has used this highly coer cive tool adding that he had made no serious attempt to satisfy the requirements for obtaining a subpoena. Furthermore, the accused devotes several paragraphs in the motion to President Cl intons right against self-incrimination, wherein he suggests that President Clint on may be liable for crimes committed by Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian Serbs, t he judges said, adding that this was completely unrelated to the subpoena reques t. This leads the chamber to believe that the accuseds motive as far as this motion i s concerned is not to advance his legal defence, but to ma e political points an d attract media attention. Judges also too issue with the frequency with which Karadzic has requested subp oenas, noting that they should be used only on rare occasions. Given the proliferation of subpoena motions filed by the accused throughout his t rial, it cannot be said that he used this tool sparingly, the judges wrote.

They warned that if Karadzic did not revise his approach towards subpoenas, there may come a time when the chamber rules that his subpoena motions are frivolous. Karadzic must focus on legal and factual issues relevant and necessary to his ca se, rather than the involvement of UN member states in the conflict in Bosnia, t he judges concluded. Prosecutors allege that Karadzic, the president of Bosnias self-declared Republi a Srps a from 1992 to 1996, is responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which contributed to achieving the ob jective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosn ian Serb-claimed territory. He is also accused of planning and overseeing the 44-month siege of Sarajevo tha t left nearly 12,000 people dead, as well as the massacre of more than 7,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995. Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 after 13 years on the run. He represents himself in the courtroom and has pleaded not guilty to all the cha rges against him. Rachel Irwin is IWPRs Senior Reporter in The Hague.