British lawyer Richard Harvey has been assigned as legal counsel to Radovan Karadzic who is on trial for war crimes in The Hague. 

By Karl Dowling

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) appointed the London-based barrister on November 5th following Karadzic’s refusal to attend the trial. Harvey has been given until March 2010 to prepare.

Karadzic, who is defending himself, has repeatedly requested more time to prepare his defence owing to the 1.3 million pages of evidence and hundreds of witness statements submitted by the prosecution.

Peter Robinson, legal advisor to Mr Karadzic said, “Dr Karadzic will not cooperate with Mr Harvey. He will be filing a challenge to the appointment in the near future. The Registrar violated his own procedures [as] an accused should be provided the list of counsel and be allowed to choose from that list.”

Karadzic’s alleged crimes include the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo that began in 1992 and the genocide of over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.

Harvey has provided counsel at the ICTY twice before, serving as lead defence counsel for Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leader Lahi Brahimaj and as co-counsel for KLA soldier Haradin Bala, who was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

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