Radovan Karadzic will finally get his chance to observe international justice in action from a front row seat as his trial gets underway in The Hague. He maintains his innocence in the face of a litany of charges that include genocide and crimes against humanity. One thing is certain, Karadzic has come a long way from his earliest days as a hosptal psychiatrist, would be poet, health care embezzler and believe it or not Bosnian Greenie, to Serbian ultra nationalist political leader responsible for the four year prosecution of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While It is usually inadvisable to prejudge a court case the evidence against him is overwhelming, including his orders leading to the ethnic cleansing of some 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Sarajevo. | Radovan Karadzic is an ideal example of how easily the curse of ethnic nationalism can overwhelm rational thought and compassion for one's fellow man. In the case of the Bosnian Serbs it was compounded by the deadly ingredient of religion - amazingly in 1994 the Greek Orthodox Church declared Karadzic as "one of the most prominent sons of our Lord Jesus Christ working for peace" and decorated him with the nine- hundred-year-old Knights' Order of the First Rank of Saint Dionysius of Xanthe. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew proudly announced that "the Serbian people have been chosen by God to protect the western frontiers of Orthodoxy". The terrible fate of the Bosnian Muslims was sealed by pride and prejudice. |