Former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic yesterday asked UN judges to dismiss his war crimes case halfway through the trial.
Prosecutors finished presenting evidence against Karadzic last month, and he is calling for dismissal of all or some charges before he presents his defence.
"The prosecution has made a huge effort to try to make some kind of an indictment out of nothing," Karadzic said at the Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague.
His remarks offer what is likely a first taste of how he will argue his defence, which is due to start in October if the request for dismissal fails.
Karadzic, 66, is charged with genocide at Srebrenica, and a long list of other war crimes for allegedly orchestrating a bloody campaign by Bosnian Serb troops to eliminate Muslims and Croats from other parts of Bosnia and carve out an ethnically pure Serb state.
Karadzic is conducting his own defence, with support from lawyers.
"The entire indictment against me is founded on my alleged intent, or that 'we Serbs' intended to get rid of Bosnian Muslims and Croats from the territories where they had the right to live," he said. "The prosecution did not prove the basic part of this allegation."
Several minutes into his testimony, Presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon asked Karadzic whether he needed a break to collect his thoughts. Another judge, Melville Baird, warned him against making claims about what has or has not been proved without substantiation.
Karadzic claimed he could not have foreseen the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, in which Bosnian Serb troops under the command of General Ratko Mladic killed at least 8000 Muslim men and boys.
Karadzic said he was not aware of the killings even when they were under way.
Karadzic and Mladic were indicted together in 1995 as the chief architects of Serb atrocities throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian War.
Both say they are innocent of any wrongdoing.
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