Karadzic guilty of Bosnia genocide, jailed for 40 years

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been sentenced to 40 years in jail by U.N. judges who found him found guilty of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, as well as on nine other war crimes charges. 

Karadzic, 70, the most senior political figure to be convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, was found guilty of 10 of 11 war charges. He was acquitted on a second count of genocide in various towns in Bosnia during the 1990s. 

The judges said Karadzic was criminally responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and had committed crimes against humanity in Bosnian towns. 

According to judges, Karadzic intended to eliminate the Bosnian Muslim males in the town of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslims died in Europe's worst war crime since World War II. 

Presiding judge O-Gon Kwon said the three-year Sarajevo siege, during which the city was shelled and sniped at by besieging Bosnian Serb forces, could not have happened without Karadzic's support. 

His sentence will be reduced by slightly more than seven years for time already spent in detention. It will be served in an as yet undetermined state prison. 

One of Karadzic's legal advisers, Lawyer Peter Robinson, said he will file an appeal to the court's decision.

Robinson said Karadzic was shocked to have been found guilty of orchestrating Serb atrocities throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

The appeal process could take several more years. 

As the judges described the siege of Sarajevo, Karadzic looked pained and his face tightened into a grimace. 
Victims' families in the courtroom, some of them elderly, listened intently when the genocide at Srebrenica was discussed. One wiped away tears as...