Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is on trial
in the Hague for attempting genocide and other crimes during the war
in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In his opening statement,
prosecutor Alan Tieger read quotes from Karadzic to illustrate
that he had masterminded the acts.
"They will disappear."
"That people will disappear from the face of the Earth."
Karadzic refused to attend the opening statement,
saying he had not had enough time to prepare his defense.
In Serbia, Karadzic's brother Luka is a lawyer by education,
and an entrepreneur by profession.
Now Luka Karadzic is devoting himself to a new role: defending his brother.
He agreed to meet us in a cafe in Dorcol,
one of the oldest parts of Belgrade, near his home.
Radovan Karadzic is in the Hague, facing severe charges,
including genocide and ethnic cleansing. Do you think he is guilty?
No, absolutely not, of any of those charges from the Hague tribunal.
I can explain, if you are interested.
He is charged with command responsibility.
He could not be responsible. Nor could he have known what was happening
in the field in that miserable war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I do not claim that there were no crimes committed.
They were committed by all three sides: Serbian, Muslim and Croatian.
But they were individual crimes.
The names of the people who committed them are known,
and as far as the Serbs were concerned they were processed in 90% of the cases.
As I have said, there was crime, but there was revenge as well.
Imagine a Serbian soldier comes home and finds his family
slaughtered in the most brutal way.
Bodies without heads, burned houses, charred bodies.
The desire for revenge arises in him, and that's probably why
some crimes were committed. But my brother can't be responsible
for those crimes, because people went out of control.
Secondly, how could he be blamed under command responsibility?
He was, starting in 1992, spending half his time in negotiations.
The Lisbon Treaty, different contact groups, Slobodan Milosevic,
Croatia's former president Franjo Tudjman and Mate Boban
and other leaders who were coming to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He was traveling a lot.
How could he know what was happening on the battlefield?
Organizations of non-Serb victims of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
such as Mothers of Srebrenica,
consider your brother the main culprit for what happened.
The victims' families are manipulated by leaders from Sarajevo.
They don't consider Radovan Karadzic the main culprit,
but they want to accuse Serbs, to pass all the responsibility onto Serbs.
They say that Muslims suffered the greatest.
I do not say they didn't, but how did they lose so much?
Muslims were fighting against the Serbs, against Croats and between themselves.
You know that with forces of Former Bosnian Muslim Leader Fikret Abdic in the region of Cazin,
it was an intensive, bloody war.
Why does Radovan Karadzic delay his appearance at the court?
Why is he delaying? Well, of course because they didn't give him enough time to prepare.
My brother has received more than 1.3 million pages of evidence since May.
When someone says he is not cooperative, it has nothing to do with the truth.
My brother has cooperated.
He agreed to receive documentation from the Hague Tribunal in the electronic form,
a lot of it in English. He speaks English, but I am not sure if he knows enough to understand
legal terminology.
Imagine how much material he got -- 3 to 4,000 pages every day since May.
Who in the world has the brain to read that much material, let alone study it?
He didn't ask for years. He asked for 10 more months, until May or June.
He wants to prepare in order to show the truth.
He is helpless over there. They can do with him whatever they want.
They can kill him, give him a life sentence, set him free tomorrow...
but his aim is to present the truth, and that truth will be painful for many.
Did the states of Serbia and Republika Srpska offer any aid to you or your family?
No, absolutely nothing. Help was neither offered nor given to us, Radovan's family or him.
I think they were obliged to help us, especially Republika Srpska.
Compared to how the Croatian state treats their accused in the Hague, it is like black and white.
It takes good care of them. It finances them, their families, the visits of family members.
The embassy awaits them in the Hague, drives them to the detention unit,
We have had none of that.
Republika Srpska was founded under your brother's leadership.
Do you think he now regrets the decisions he made?
No, he absolutely doesn't regret anything, and he has nothing to regret.
On the contrary, he is proud. His accomplishments will be recorded in Serbian history.
So he doesn't regret it for one single moment. He has nothing to be ashamed of.