THE Bosnian Serb general Djordje Djukic pleaded not guilty yesterday to war crime charges relating to the 43 month siege of Sarajevo and said he had done nothing that warranted his appearance before the tribunal.
The UN criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia charged Gen Djukic last Friday with assisting in the shelling of the Bosnian capital during the siege from May 1992 to December 1995, in which more than 10,000 people are believed to have died.
Gen Djukic, a senior logistics officer in the Bosnian Serb army was arrested by Bosnian government police on January 30th along with Col Aleksa Krsmanovic. The pair, accused by the Bosnian authorities of war crimes, were whisked to a detention centre at the tribunal's seat in The Hague by Nato soldiers on February 12th.
Standing with his hands clasped in front of him, Gen Djukic told the hearing that he understood the indictment, which accused him of crimes against humanity and violating the laws and customs of war.
"I plead not guilty and I haven't done anything that would have to put me in front of this tribunal today," he said. "The fact that I appear in front of this tribunal means that any officer of the army of Republica Srpksa [the Bosnian Serb republic] or any civilian that happened to be in the war could end up here."
Gen Djukic's legal representative, the prominent Belgrade lawyer Mr Milan Vujin, called the proceedings "a kind of judicial and legal nonsense". Mr Vujin said that serious procedural questions were raised by the fact that Gen Djukic was being investigated both by the tribunal and by the Sarajevo authorities.
"We have a sort of judicial and legal nonsense, that Gen Djukic is being investigated both here and there [Sarajevo]. This is contrary to the [tribunal's] rules of procedure and evidence and contrary to international law."
Gen Djukic, a senior aide to the Bosnian Serb military commander Gen Ratko Mladic, who has also been indicted by the tribunal, is refusing to answer prosecutors' questions.
The hearing was adjourned.
Nato ambassadors met in Brussels yesterday to discuss proposals to radically change the scope of the Nato led Implementation Force in Bosnia, laying the ground for closer involvement in war crimes investigations, diplomats said.