The Hague - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Wednesday appealed the war crime tribunal's decision to appoint an attorney for him. In a separate motion, the former psychiatrist also protested the court's decision not meet his demands to reimburse his defence team for the hours he had requested.
In his appeal, Karadzic wrote that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) had "seemingly picked out of thin air that a 3.5 month period would be an adequate time for standby counsel to be prepared for trial of this magnitude and complexity."
On November 5, the ICTY appointed an attorney for Karadzic on grounds that the Bosnian Serb leader "substantially and persistently obstructed" trial proceedings.
The decision came after Karadzic refused to attend the hearings since his trial opened on October 26, claiming he was not given enough time to prepare himself.
In its ruling, the chamber also said the trial would resume only on March 1 to give the appointed counsel time to prepare.
Karadzic, who is representing himself at the UN-sponsored tribunal, faces 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including two counts of genocide for acts allegedly committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.
In a separate motion, the 64-year-old also appealed the ICTY's decision not to meet his demands to reimburse his defense team for 3.180 extra work hours.
Karadzic's 27-member defence team is entitled to limited reimbursements from the ICTY because the former psychiatrist is representing himself.
Karadzic claims his legal team was unexpectedly forced to work extra after the prosecution decided to call 480 witnesses and produce more than one million documents.
On November 5, the court however rejected his request to approve reimbursement for all 3,180 extra hours the former psychiatrist had requested, approving only 500 extra hours in reimbursement.
In his appeal, Karadzic wrote that now that his team had only been paid half of what it should have received, his assistants had "stopped working completely."
US-born attorney Peter Robinson, who heads Karadzic's defence team, confirmed he has temporarily "stopped" working but declined to call his action a strike.
Radovan Karadzic is alleged to have orchestrated, among others, the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces brutally killed some 8,000 men after taking over the Muslim enclave declared an United Nations safe area.
He was first indicted in 1995 but remained at large until Serbian authorities arrested him in July 2008, transferring him to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
