The Hague Tribunal is to pronounce the verdict to Radonvan Karadžić today. Karadžić is the former president of Republika Srpska, accused of genocide and crimes against Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1992 until 1995.
The verdict should be brought by the Chamber chaired by the South Korean judge O-Gon Kwon, and members of the Chamber are Judge Howard Morrison from Great Britain and Judge Melville Baird from Trinidad and Tobago.
Judge O-Gon Kwon has been working as a Standing Judge of the International Criminal Court since 2001. He worked on various positions, also being the vice-president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He is remembered in BiH as a member of the Trial Chamber that led the trial of Slobodan Milošević, accused of genocide in seven municipalities in BiH.
In 2004, with the majority of votes the Trial Chamber concluded that Milošević “participated in a joint criminal enterprise, together with the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs at the time”. However, in this case Kwon separated his opinion, believing that “it has not been proved out of reasonable doubt that the accused Milošević acted with the intention of destroying the Bosniaks, partially or as a whole – as an ethnic and religious group”.
In the case “Karadžić”, in 2012 O-Gon Kwon also imposed the attitude that genocide has not been committed in seven BiH municipalities (Bratunac, Foča, Ključ, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik). After the appeal by the Prosecution, such decision was withdrawn.
Judge Kwon chaired the Trial Chamber which in 2011 sentenced Vojislav Šešelj to one and a half years in prison due to publishing the identities of protected witnesses in trials for war crimes in Croatia, Vojvodina and BiH.
Judge Melville Baird is the retired judge of Trinidad and Tobago. He has been a member of the International Criminal Court since December 15, 2008. He is known as the judge who judged in the cases of the gravest homicides, attempts of homicides, kidnappings and similar cases in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Judge Howard Morrison was born in Great Britain on July 20, 1949. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of London. He has a very rich career behind, and in 2001 he even performed as the Royal attorney. Morrison has been a judge of the International Court since August 31, 2009.
(Source: novovrijeme.ba)
