Lawyers Assembled For War Crimes Trial

More than 20 criminal lawyers have been assembled to defend Bosnian Serb officers at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, and their chief task will be to insure that the defendants do not cooperate, the chief lawyer said Monday.

“The tribunal should be warned now, none of our people will ever speak,” said Toma Fila, the chief lawyer for Gen. Djordje Djukic, a Bosnian Serb who was arrested and extradited by the Muslim-led Bosnian government.

Djukic, the highest-ranking of three Bosnian Serbs in custody in The Hague and a colleague of Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander, was indicted last week on charges connected with the Serbs’ indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas during siege of Sarajevo. He pleaded not guilty Monday.

Fila, a former head of the Belgrade Bar Association, said it was clear from the indictment that prosecutors were hoping to get information from his client that would incriminate more senior officials.

Fila was referring to Mladic and to Dr. Radovan Karadzic, the civilian leader of the Bosnian Serbs, both of whom have been indicted by the tribunal, and President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, who has not.

Lawyers involved with the tribunal’s work have said they believe the most certain path to an indictment against Milosevic was from information provided by Serbian officials who joined in war operations.