Judge adjourns first day of prosecution statements after ex-Bosnian Serb leader says he needs more time to prepare defence

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader charged with genocide for the worst mass murders in Europe since the Nazis, called the bluff of the special UN war crimes tribunal today by boycotting the opening of his trial.

Presiding over the trial in courtroom number one of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the judge, O-Gon Kwon, of South Korea, sparked uproar in the gallery by adjourning the keenly awaited case after a brief 20-minute hearing.

Dozens of Bosnian Muslim victims and survivors of the Serbian mass murder at Srebrenica in 1995 howled and wailed as the judge adjourned the proceedings and pleaded with Karadzic to appear in court tomorrow afternoon.

Karadzic faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly orchestrating a systematic campaign of murder, terror and deportation in the 1992-95 war aimed at seizing half of Bosnia and ridding it of all non-Serbs.

"This is nothing but dirty, dirty politics," said Zumraca Sehomerovic, from the eastern town of Srebrenica, who travelled for two days by bus from Sarajevo to witness the appearance of a hated figure in the dock. "I'm totally shocked by this. We've been waiting for this for 14 years, demanding justice. But instead of being punished, he's being rewarded."

Her husband and son were among the almost 8,000 Muslim males massacred by the Serbs at Srebrenica in an act that the court has already established was one of genocide.

Bakira Hasecic, one of the thousands of Bosnian Muslim rape victims of a systematic Serbian campaign of sexual assault during the war, said that if the international court was incapable of delivering justice, Karadzic should be handed over to a local court. "Let him come to Sarajevo. We've got courts. We'll deal with him," she said.

The Karadzic trial is arguably the biggest and one of the last to be held at the tribunal. He was arrested last year in Belgrade after 13 years on the run under a new identity and heavy disguise as a new age healer.

He is insisting on defending himself in the trial, allowing him to play for time and delay the proceedings.

The prosecution team used today's short hearing to insist Karadzic have defence lawyers imposed on him and be forced to attend the chamber. Giving in to Karadzic's delaying tactics meant that "the trial can only start if the accused says it should," argued Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff, a prosecutor. "There is no reason today not to start the trial."

The same tactics were used by the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian warlord Vojislav Seselj to politicise their trials and drag them out interminably. Judges have been criticised by lawyers, victims' associations and human rights activists for allowing the war crimes suspects to set the agenda and manipulate the court.

Judge Kwon said a recording of this morning's brief proceedings would be made available to Karadzic in his cell in the nearby detention unit and that the accused should appear tomorrow afternoon.

Karadzic last week described his long-awaited trial as "the biggest, most complex, important and sensitive case ever before this tribunal", and argued that he needed a lot more time to plough through around 1 million pages of prosecution evidence.

"My defence is not ready," he said. "I will not appear before you on that date [today]." This threat appeared in the English version of a 10-page letter from Karadzic. The original, in Serbian, contained no explicit threat of a boycott.

Karadzic was the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-95 war, which left 100,000 dead – mainly Bosnian Muslims – and divided the country into Serbian and Muslim-Croat halves. He has been indicted on two counts of genocide, the gravest charges possible, for allegedly overseeing the mass murder and deportation of tens of thousands of Bosnia's Muslims in the north-west of the country in 1992 and at Srebrenica, in the north-east, in 1995.

He faces a further nine charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the 44-month Serbian siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in 1992-95, and for taking more than 200 UN peacekeepers hostage in 1995 in order to deter Nato from launching bombing raids.