Pat Dollard

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Independent and BBC:

Radovan Karadzic has decided to conduct his own defence against genocide charges at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague and is convinced he will win his case, his Serbian lawyer said yesterday.

The former Bosnian Serb leader, who disguised himself as a long-haired, bearded, alternative medicine healer before his arrest on Monday by Serbian security forces, requested a shave and haircut in his Belgrade prison cell yesterday, his lawyer Svetozar Vujacic said.

“He looks like his old self, a bit aged,” Mr Vujacic said.

Official papers have been prepared for his extradition to the UN court which could come as early as the weekend. Mr Vujacic said Mr Karadzic would formally appeal against the extradition order on Friday, when a legal deadline expires, to allow his family to visit, if they are allowed to leave Bosnia.

“He will defend himself during his trial at The Hague,” Mr Vujacic said. “He is convinced that, with the help of God, he will win.”

Accused of leading the slaughter of thousands of Bosniaks and Croats, he has twice been indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The UN says his forces killed at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995 as part of a campaign to “terrorise and demoralise the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat population”.

He was also charged over the shelling of Sarajevo, and the use of 284 UN peacekeepers as human shields in May and June 1995.
After the Dayton accord that ended the Bosnian war, the former nationalist president went into hiding – possibly in the mountainous south-eastern area of the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia, protected by paramilitaries.