Karadzic Verdict: Mastermind of Violence or Victim of Injustice?

When reaching their final judgement, the judges at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague will remain within the parameters of the appeals filed by the prosecutors and Karadzic's defence.

The prosecutors' appeal consists of four parts. The first part refers to the duration of the sentence and suggests that Karadzic should get a life sentence for each of the three joint criminal enterprises in which he participated - the Srebrenica genocide, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo and persecution in 20 municipalities across Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"Considered together, they form the gravest set of crimes ever attributed to a single person at the ICTY and require the highest available sentence-a life sentence," the prosecutors said.

Graphic: BIRN.

Detention camp conditions 'indicated genocidal intent'

The prosecutors also argued that the first-instance verdict erred in finding that Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for forced displacement in Bratunac, Foca, Kljuc, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik in 1992, while other crimes, such as murders, destruction and sexual violence, were just foreseeable consequences, not separate planned crimes within an overall genocidal plan.

The verdict's view that it was possible that Karadzic did not want the other crimes to happen, but did not care enough to stop them, was incorrect, the prosecutors insisted.

The prosecutors went on to say that the plan for the commission of the crimes was exactly what indicated Karadzic and other members of the joint criminal enterprise's genocidal intent in 1992.

"It is self-evident that a common criminal purpose encompassing murder, extermination and cruel or inhumane treatment - corresponding to...