UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The U.N. Balkan war crimes tribunal Friday sentenced a former municipal officer to two months in prison for refusing to testify at Radovan Karadzic's trial.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands, found Milan Tupajic, former chief of the crisis staff and war-time president of the municipality of Sokolac in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in contempt of court for refusing to testify in the trial of the former Bosnian Serb leader, the United Nations said in a release.
Tupajic told the court health concerns kept him from testifying, but the tribunal said Tupajic's failure to comply deprived the court of relevant evidence.
Tupajic's health concerns "do not constitute a just excuse for his failure to comply with the orders as contained in the subpoenas," the ruling stated.
Tupajic was arrested in December and is entitled to credit for time already served in detention, the tribunal said.
Karadzic, whose trial began in October 2009, faces two counts of genocide as well as charges of murder, extermination, persecution, deportation and hostage taking of Muslims, Croats and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995.
