ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 8, 1996 TAG: 9605080040
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
SOURCE: MIKE CORDER ASSOCIATED PRESS
HIS NAME IS DUSAN TADIC, and he is accused of horrific crimes. His attorney says Tadic is merely a scapegoat.
Pale, impassive, wearing a baggy blue suit and flanked by U.N. guards, a 40-year-old Serb faced international justice Tuesday in the first war crimes trial to come out of the Bosnian war.
The presiding judge, a Texan robed in black and scarlet, declared early in the slow, methodical proceedings that whatever the historic importance of the case, Dusan Tadic was innocent until proven guilty.
Tadic's lawyer said he was a victim of mistaken identity, swept up by authorities frantic to find a scapegoat for the atrocities of Bosnia.
But the chief prosecutor in the trial, the first international war crimes proceeding since Nuremberg, accused the former bar owner of offenses of ``unspeakable horror,'' including torture, murdering Muslim prisoners with karate kicks and forcing one prisoner to castrate another with his teeth.
The trial, to include video appearances by witnesses allegedly too terrified of Tadic to face him in court, opened in a building ringed by steel barriers and flanked by tents to accommodate hundreds of reporters.
A 30-yard wall of bulletproof glass separated the judges, attorneys and defendant from the spectators' gallery, packed with people who had waited in long lines to get in. Scores of armed U.N. and Dutch police patrolled inside and outside the courtroom.
Chief Judge Gabrielle Kirl McDonald of Houston and the two other judges hearing the case, also attired in black and scarlet, sat behind a raised bench of solid wood fitted with computer screens for viewing documentary evidence, including maps.
Tadic flipped on a computer screen placed on the long wooden dock when he entered the courtroom and listened impassively to a translation of the proceedings over a headset.
The first war crimes trial since Nuremberg ``has certain historic dimensions,'' McDonald said in her opening statement, referring to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals that ended in 1956.
``Nevertheless, we should all remember first and foremost that this is a criminal trial,'' she said.
Tadic is charged with crimes against humanity for taking part in more than 30 murders and torturing Muslims in and around the Serb-run Omarska prison camp in northwestern Bosnia in 1992. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.
According to prosecutors, Tadic terrorized three camps in Bosnia's northwestern Prijedor region from May through December 1992. He also is accused of rounding up Muslims and Croats in the area, killing or assaulting some, and driving others into the camps.
In his opening statement Tuesday, chief prosecutor Grant Niemann of Australia described Tadic's transformation from a small businessman in the northwestern Bosnian town of Kozarac to a nationalist zealot freed by the Serb uprising to indulge his sadistic impulses.
``Through this trial we will embark on an examination of offenses of unspeakable horror,'' Niemann said.
He described one attack on inmates at Omarska in which Tadic, a martial arts expert, allegedly kicked Muslim inmates to death while other Serbs used baseball bats and lengths of cable.
``The man who appeared to be in charge was Tadic,'' Niemann said. ``Tadic did not use any weapons, only his feet in a karate fashion.''
But defense attorney Mischa Wladimiroff warned Tuesday that the Yugoslav tribunal was an experiment in justice that could fail.
``An international hunger for a verdict of guilty must be resisted at all costs,'' Wladimiroff said. ``The tribunal must be wary of desires for revenge and the need for a scapegoat.''
LENGTH: Medium: 73 linesby CNB