UN prosecutor urges judges to give Karadzic life sentence

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – A United Nations prosecution lawyer has urged appeals judges to convict former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on a second genocide count and increase his 40-year sentence for overseeing Serb atrocities during the Bosnian war to a life sentence.

Prosecutor Katrina Gustafson told a five-judge appellate panel at the U.N. Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals that Karadzic "abused his immense power to spill the blood of countless victims. Justice requires that he receive the highest possible sentence — a life sentence."

Karadzic's lawyers said Tuesday that not only should he not be convicted of a second genocide count, but the genocide conviction imposed by trial judges in 2016 for Karadzic's role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre should be overturned on appeal.