Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has told judges he will boycott the start of his trial for war crimes next week, confronting them with a dilemma on how to proceed, Reuters reported. Charged with 11 counts, including genocide, over the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Karadzic on Wednesday filed a submission informing the court in The Hague that he would not appear in court for the scheduled start of his trial next Monday. "This process is not ready to start, simply because the defence was not granted sufficient time and resources to prepare," Karadzic said in a letter to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The tribunal said on Thursday the trial -- one of the biggest it has handled -- would go ahead as planned, but a leading jurist said it was likely to delay the case. "At the moment there is no indication that the procedure will not go ahead as scheduled. The control of court proceedings is entirely in the hands of the tribunal"s judges," tribunal spokesperson Nerma Jelacic said in a statement. Jelacic added that the trial chambers are the only relevant body that can make a decision about the readiness of the case. Alexander Knoops, international criminal law professor at Utrecht University, said there were now several options before the tribunal, including delaying the case or appointing counsel to represent Karadzic. "But it is not to be excluded that the court -- facing this dilemma -- has no other alternative but to seek a compromise ... and maybe they have to propose a one- or two-month delay," said Knoops, who also serves as defence counsel at the ICTY. He said the most likely scenario is that the tribunal suspends the case before or on Monday and enters into a compromise with Karadzic, who tried unsuccessfully last week to have the trial delayed for 10 months. There are no specific rules in ICTY statutes to deal with such situations. In April 2008, Serbian State Security Service chief Jovica Stanisic refused to attend his trial, citing health concerns, and the appeals chamber in May of that year adjourned the case for a minimum of three months. Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said on Tuesday that Karadzic, who has filed almost 270 motions over various issues since his transfer to the tribunal"s detention centre, had had 15 months to prepare and the defence"s rights had been respected. Karadzic is charged with genocide over the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995. He is also charged over the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo by Serb forces. The break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s saw some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War Two as Serbs, Croats and Muslims fought for territory. More than 100,000 people were killed in warfare and through policies such as "ethnic cleansing". Karadzic went into hiding from 1996 but was discovered living in Belgrade in July 2008 and extradited to The Hague. His former military commander, General Ratko Mladic, is still a fugitive sought by the war crimes tribunal. In a separate development, Sweden said on Thursday it would release former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic next week, two-thirds into an 11-year jail term for war crimes. --SPA
