Wiretap evidence of Radovan Karadzic allegedly discussing the mass slaughter of 300,000 Muslims was unveiled today at the genocide trial of the former Bosnian Serb leader.
To an array of empty desks reserved for Mr Karadzic and his defence team - who has boycotted his trial in The Hague - the prosecution began its opening statement by quoting the words uttered by Mr Karadzic on the eve of the Bosnian conflict - the bloodiest seen in Europe since the Second World War.
"The time has come," Alan Tieger, the prosecutor, quoted Mr Karadzic as telling the Bosnian Serb Parliament, as he signed the order to recapture Zepa and Srebrenica, the United Nations safe haven where Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
Mr Tieger then revealed evidence from a series of recorded phone calls from 1991 in which Mr Karadzic chillingly considered the fate of Sarajevo, the multi-ethnic Bosnian capital which Serb forces besieged for 44 months.
The phone taps record Mr Karadzic saying: "They have to know that there are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo.... it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth."
Mr Tieger said that Mr Karadzic showed nothing but contempt for the views of the international community for the Bosnian Serb programme of ethnic cleansing - the euphemism invented during the conflict to sanitise the killing of thousands of Muslims.
"As he said in October 1991 in anticipation of what he had planned: 'Europe will be told to go f*** itself, and not to come back until the job is finished'."
Mr Tieger concluded: "This case is about that Supreme Commander, a man who harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to implement his vision of an ethnic Bosnia. That Supreme Commander was Radovan Karadzic."
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia decided to push ahead with proceedings today, even though Mr Karadzic refused to attend for a second day.
Judge O-Gon Kwon, the chief judge, issued a second warning that Mr Karadzic would have a legal representative imposed upon him if he continued to remain in his cell, and ruled that the prosecution could begin to outline the case against him.
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