year after more than a decade on the run and was found to have been living in Belgrade , the capital of Serbia , and practicing alternative medicine in disguise . In a letter dated Wednesday and made public Thursday , Karadzic complains that he has not been given the relevant case material on time -- and he says the volume of material would have been too much to go through even if he had received it promptly . `` I ask Your Excellencies -- why and how is it possible that the prosecution is allowed to literally bury me under a million of pages , only to start disclosing relevant material many months after my arrest ? '' he writes . `` Why and how is it possible that the prosecution is allowed to file its final indictment against me on the eve of the planned trial date ? '' Karadzic says he should not be penalized for representing himself . `` No lawyer in this world could prepare defense within this period of time , '' he writes . `` I hereby inform you that my defense is not ready for my trial that is supposed to begin
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic intends to skip the start of his war crimes trial because he says he has had too little time to prepare , a spokeswoman for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said Thursday . Radovan Karadzic wrote to the court to say he would not attend the trial . The trial is still expected to begin on Monday despite Karadzic 's intended absence , which he announced in a letter to the court , the spokeswoman said . `` The tribunal judges control court proceedings . They are the only relevant body that can make a decision about the readiness of the case for trial , '' she said . Karadzic , who is defending himself , faces genocide charges and nine other counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Bosnian Muslims , Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbian civilians during the brutal and bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s . The conflict introduced the phrase `` ethnic cleansing '' into the lexicon describing war crimes , as different factions in multi-ethnic Yugoslavia sought to kill or drive out other groups . Karadzic was arrested last