Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic begins his own defence at his war crimes tribunal in the Hague by saying he should be “rewarded” for seeking peace.
Beginning his defence at his trial in the Hague, he said he was a “tolerant man” who had sought peace in Bosnia.
Mr Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in 2008 after almost 13 years on the run.
He faces 10 charges of genocide and crimes against humanity during the war in the 1990s, including the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo.
More than 7,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys were killed at Srebrenica in the worst atrocity in Europe since the end of World War II.
During the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, more than 12,000 civilians died.
Karadzic, 67, went on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in October 2009.
He began a lengthy personal statement by saying he had done “everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering”.
Speaking calmly, Mr Karadzic said he was a “mild man, a tolerant man with great capacity to understand others”.
He had stopped the Bosnian Serb army many times when it had been close to victory, he said, had sought peace agreements, applied humanitarian measures and honoured international law.
He insisted that there had been no history of conflict between ethnic groups until Serbs came to feel increasingly threatened by growing power amongst Muslims in Serbia.
Karadzic’s army chief, Ratko Mladic, is also on trial at The Hague.
When Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Karadzic led the Bosnian Serbs to their own republic in 1992.
Under Karadzic, who was arrested in 2008, the then General Mladic systematically removed Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats from Serb-held areas of Bosnia, giving the world the euphemism “ethnic cleansing”.