Karadzic Rally Turns Violent in Belgrade

BELGRADE, Serbia, July 29, 2008 — -- What was meant as a peaceful rally in support of indicted war criminal suspect Radovan Karadzic turned violent in Belgrade, Serbia, this evening as thousands of supporters of the former Bosnian Serb leader gathered to protest his arrest and his imminent extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

At least nine police and a Spanish camerman were among the 46 people injured during clashes when the rally took a violent turn after a number of heated political speeches. Police used rubber bullets and tear gas on the crowd after about 100 mostly drunken youngsters began taunting police and then threw stones and smashed shops on the sidelines of the rally.

Karadzic is fighting his transfer to the Hague, where he stands accused on 11 charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. He is charged with authorizing the shooting of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, which left 10,000 people dead, and directing the 1995 slaughter of an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica.

Serbian officials announced his capture July 21 in Belgrade, where he lived for more than 10 years under the assumed identity of a health guru named Dragan Dabic, with a long white beard and hair, and large glasses disguising his true identity.

Hardline supporters see Karadzic as a hero and defender of the Serb nation. They held posters and flags with his image. The stage for an "all-Serb" afternoon rally was decorated with a huge blue canvas with the inscription "Freedom for Serbia, freedom for Radovan."

Buses from all over Serbia and Republika Srpska, a Serb area within Bosnia, began arriving in Belgrade as early as Monday night.

"I came to Belgrade because I refuse to accept that one could betray a Serb hero and hand him over to foreigners," said Nevenka, a 45-year-old from the southern town of Jagodina, Serbia.

"I do not understand the process at The Hague," said Borislav, a law student from Paracin, Serbia, wearing a black t-shirt with an image of Karadzic. "A number of Serbs do not understand why the court seems to condemn Serbs and free non-Serbs."

Many recent rulings from the war cimes tribunal cleared other non-Serb suspected war criminals from the Balkans, such as Kosovo Albanian former guerilla fighter Ramush Haradinaj and Bosnian Muslim Naser Oric, who was indicted for not preventing killings of Serb civilians in Srebrenica.

A Week of Demonstrations

Demonstrations against Karadzic's arrest last Monday have been held in Belgrade for a straight week.

Serbian authorities have deployed dozens of extra riot police throughout Belgrade to guard against possible trouble from demonstrators, especially since the demonstration is the biggest in Belgrade since February, when 150,000 protested Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia. That rally sparked attacks on U.S. and other western embassies and included wild rioting and looting that claimed the life of a protestor.

The U.S. embassy in Belgrade issued a warning to Americans to be cautious in the city ahead of tonight's rally.

"Estimates of the number of possible participants range from 25,000 to 100,000. As a safety precaution, it is recommended to avoid the downtown area," the warning read. "We remind American citizens that even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. American citizens are, therefore, urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible."

The embassy closed at 3 p.m. today because of the rally.

Appeal Paperwork Delayed

Ivana Ramic, the spokeswoman for the court in Belgrade dealing with Karadzic's case, said his appeal against the extradition to the U.N. court had not arrived by the time the court had closed for the day today.

Prominent local lawyer Vladimir Horovitz, claims that the Serbian Special Court for war crimes on Wednesday will decide about Karadzic's extradition to The Hague tribunal, regardless of whether Karadzic's petition for appeal reaches the court.

"It is to be expected that the court will bring a decision to deliver Karadzic to The Hague, because if the appeal of his defender doesn't arrive in reasonable time, and the defender doesn't have a proof he sent it, the court can decide that the decision of investigation judge for meeting the criteria for defendant's delivery can go into effect," Horovitz said.

Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, openly admitted to reporters yesterday that the appeal was posted by registered mail at the latest possible moment before the weekend -- a tactic designed to delay his transfer to The Hague. Vujacic claims that Karadzic was kidnapped on a Belgrade public bus on July 18, three days before the official report of his arrest, and illegally held for three days by unknown captors.

Vujacic said Karadzic will not enter a plea in his first appearance in front of The Hague tribunal, but will, instead, request an additional 30 days to prepare the defense.

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said a search of the Belgrade apartment where Karadzic lived yielded copies of wartime Bosnian documents, including minutes of meetings of the Bosnian Serb army chief of staff during the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995.

Vujacic said that Karadzic insists "the laptop and 50 diskettes to be returned to him, because his defense is there."

Meanwhile, at The Hague, the prosecution is reviewing the indictment against Karadzic, which was last amended in 2000, to take into account recent jurisprudence and new evidence, Olga Kavran, spokesperson for the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) prosecution told ABCNews.com. ICTY have reviewed their operations to speed up trials after the trial of the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic dragged on for four years until he died.