Prosecutors in the Radovan Karadzic case have to present the court with a written document showing how his trial can be settled more quickly, judges at the Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said on Thursday.
The prosecutors are to indicate which witnesses are superfluous and which indictments can be dropped.
This is not the first time the judges have urged the prosecution to reduce the charge sheet. Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz, however, has to date been unwilling to meet their demand.
Brammertz wants to prosecute the ex-president of the Republika Srpska on eleven counts of the indictment committed in 27 municipalities in Bosnia, including Srebrenica and Sarajevo.
And he wants to use the testimony of five hundred witnesses to help make his case.
In a written statement the judges said that if Brammertz does not narrow the charge sheet down himself, they will probably do it for him.
The U.N. court was initially meant to finish all trials by 2008 and appeals by 2010. But it has recently suggested that its will only conclude its final Karadzic trial early 2012, while appeals may run into 2013.
Iain Bonomy, judge in the Karadzic trial, also served as judge during the trial against the ex-president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic died in the fifth year of his trial, before the tribunal had reached its verdict. One of the reasons why the legal proceedings took so long was the elaborate indictment against him. Many experts regard the Milosovic as an example of how not to administer international criminal justice.
Prosecutors charge Karadzic with masterminding the mass murder at Srebrenica, that left around 8,000 people dead, and the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that cost the lives of 10,000 people. Bonomy suggested earlier that the court may not be able to “do” both Sarajevo and Srebrenica.
Also on Thursday, Karadzic said during a preliminary hearing that he wants DNA tests to prove that the death toll of the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 has been exaggerated. A “correct list of victims”, he said, would be “thousands” below the official figure of around 8,000.
Karadzic stands trail on charges of genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, wilful killing, persecutions, deportations, inhumane acts and other crimes during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war that left an estimated 100,000 people dead.
















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