BOSNIA: Former Serb leader faces final war crimes verdict

A UN court is to hand down its final ruling in the case of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was convicted of genocide. Karadzic, 73, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2016 by a UN tribunal in The Hague, but appealed his sentence. At the launch of his appeal he said […]

A UN court is to hand down its final ruling in the case of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was convicted of genocide.

Karadzic, 73, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2016 by a UN tribunal in The Hague, but appealed his sentence.

At the launch of his appeal he said his conviction was based on “rumours”.

Karadzic was found guilty on 10 counts of genocide, war crimes and other atrocities, including planning the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995.

Bosnian Serb soldiers slaughtered nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in a “safe area” in Srebrenica protected by Dutch peacekeeping forces for the UN.

The massacre was the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two.

Karadzic, a former psychiatrist, was president of the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War in the 1990s.