Karadzic Appeals 40-year Genocide Sentence

THE HAGUE, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22th july, 2016) - Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Friday lodged an appeal against his 40-year jail sentence for genocide, accusing UN judges of "subjecting him to a political trial". Warcrimes prosecutors also appealed the sentence, asking the court to put Karadzic behind bars for life. Karadzic, who appealed on 50 grounds before the UN's Yugoslav war crimes court, "was subjected to a political trial that was simply designed to confirm the demonisation of him and the Bosnian Serb people," his lawyer Peter Robinson said in a statement.

Once the most powerful Bosnian Serb leader, Karadzic, 71, was sentenced in March for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and nine other charges stemming from Bosnia's bloody three-year war. More than 100,000 people died and more than 2.2 million others were left homeless in the conflict that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia after the fall of communism in the early 1990s.