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Karadzic guilty of genocide, jailed for 40 years

– Huge ‘day for justice’ –

A long-time fugitive from justice until his arrest on a Belgrade bus in 2008, Karadzic, a one-time psychiatrist with his trademark bouffant hairdo, was found guilty for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia.

Almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves by Bosnian Serb forces who brushed aside Dutch UN peacekeepers in the supposedly “safe area.”

The massacre was the worst bloodshed on European soil since World War II.

He was also found guilty of being behind the 44-month siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 civilians died in a relentless campaign of sniping and shelling.

“It’s a hugely significant day today for international justice,” said Jasna Causevic, 58, one of the protesters outside the ICTY.

“Karadzic and his group, including Milosevic, divided Bosnia and that’s still the case today,” she told AFP.

In an unexpected earlier drama, the former spokeswoman for ex-chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte was detained at the tribunal by UN guards.

Florence Hartmann had been convicted of contempt and sentenced to seven days in jail for revealing confidential court details in a 2007 book.

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During the trial, which open in 2009 and ended in October 2014 after an exhausting 497 days in the courtroom, some 115,000 pages of documentary evidence were presented along with 586 witnesses.

Lavien Partawie, 25, waiting outside the court with the Society for Threatened Peoples, said: “It is important for the victims of Bosnia Herzegovina. We are hoping to get justice.”

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