Karadžić before Meron: Requests release to prepare appeal against 40-year prison sentence

Convicted war criminal Radovan Karadžić today at a hearing before the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Theodor Meron, called the 40-year sentence “monstrous,” reports the Patria agency. 

The France Presse agency reports that Karadžić during the special hearing at the Hague Tribunal reiterated his innocence on all counts of the indictment, including genocide, from the time of the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

AFP reports that Karadžić asked the court to release him so he could prepare an appeal against last month's verdict.

Radovan Karadžić, sentenced by the Hague Tribunal to 40 years in prison, today requested to be released to prepare his appeal, noting that detention is destroying his health.
[Karadžić requested temporary release, Meron denied the request]
Photo: EPA
President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Theodor Meron, rejected Karadžić's request but ordered an examination of health conditions in the detention unit.

Karadžić (70), who requested a tribunal session because he said he was exposed to health pressures and poor detention conditions, focused his 10-minute address on the injustice of the verdict. 

At the insistence of Judge Meron to directly clarify his health problems, Karadžić stated that his health had deteriorated during the eight years he spent in detention, for which he blamed the "malignancy" in the detention unit, which he claims has "taken" the lives of other prisoners.

Conditions in the detention unit were "like from the 19th century, like in some communist or Turkish prison," Karadžić explained.

Meron rejected Karadžić's appeal for release but added that his complaints about health conditions in the detention unit would be examined.