UN war crimes judges on Thursday began delivering a long-awaited verdict against former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused of genocide during the brutal break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
Karadzic had been "anxiously" awaiting the landmark verdict, after a marathon trial on 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, his defence lawyer told AFP.
He appeared in a blue suit and introduced his defence team to the judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) based in the Hague.
Karadzic has been tried for his alleged role during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war that claimed more than 100,000 lives and displaced 2.2 million others.
"I hope this court will fulful its mission and put this man behind bars. Our children are dead," Munira Subasic, from the Mother's of Srebrenica, told AFP.
"I hope finally the lies that have been told in Bosnia will be exposed," she added, as about 100 demonstrators gathered outside the building.
Karadzic, 70, will be the highest-profile politician from the Balkans conflicts to face judgement, after former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic died in his prison cell while on trial in 2006.
The hearing, which has drawn more than 200 journalists and over 100 other diplomats and observers, was taking place amid tight security, with one police officer saying they were on "extra alert" following Tuesday's attacks in neighbouring Belgium.
Karadzic, as president of the breakaway Republika Srpska, is accused of taking part in a joint criminal scheme to "permanently remove Muslim and Bosnian Croat inhabitants... from areas claimed as Bosnian Serb territory".
This was done through a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate killings, persecutions and terror, said the ICTY's prosecutors, who have asked for a sentence of life imprisonment.
Karadzic, also a published poet, remained defiant this week, telling Balkans media on Wednesday he expected to be "acquitted", and playing down the killings at Srebrenica as only "several hundred".
- Huge 'day for justice' -
A long-time fugitive from justice until his arrest on a Belgrade bus in 2008, Karadzic, a one-time psychiatrist with his trademark bouffant hairdo, was notably wanted for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia.
Almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves by Bosnian Serb forces who brushed aside Dutch UN peacekeepers in the supposedly "safe area."
The massacre was the worst bloodshed on European soil since World War II.
Significantly, Karadzic is also accused of genocide in other municipalities around Bosnia in the early 1990s including Prijedor, Sanski Most and Zvornik. A guilty verdict for this charge would be a first at the ICTY.
He is further accused, along with his military alter-ego and Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, who faces similar charges, of being behind the 44-month siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 civilians died in a relentless campaign of sniping and shelling.
"It's a hugely significant day today for international justice," said Jasna Causevic, 58, one of the protesters outside the ICTY.
"Karadzic and his group, including Milosevic, divided Bosnia and that's still the case today," she told AFP.
In an unexpected drama, the former spokeswoman for ex-chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte was detained at the tribunal by UN guards.
Florence Hartmann had been convicted of contempt and sentenced to seven days in jail for revealing confidential court details in a 2007 book.
Meanwhile, Karadzic's lawyer Peter Robinson told AFP at the court on Thursday that his client was "anxiously" awaiting the verdict, adding in a tweet that it would be "the longest day ever."
During the trial, which open in 2009 and ended in October 2014 after an exhausting 497 days in the courtroom, some 115,000 pages of documentary evidence were presented along with 586 witnesses.
Lavien Partawie, 25, waiting outside the court with the Society for Threatened Peoples, said: "It is important for the victims of Bosnia Herzegovina. We are hoping to get justice."