Radovan Karadzic will conduct his own defence in the Hague tribunal and is convinced he will be cleared of the charges of genocide, relatives and associates of the war crimes suspect said on Wednesday.

Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, was arrested in Serbia on Monday after 11 years on the run.

He was one of three war crimes fugitives from the Yugoslav wars, their arrest a key condition for Serbia to move towards European Union membership. He is currently in a Belgrade prison awaiting extradition, which could come sometime this weekend.

Karadzic’s lawyer in Serbia, Svetozar Vujacic, said his client was in good mental and physical condition. He was not talking to investigators, but defending himself with silence.

He is going to have a legal team in Serbia but he will be defending himself (without a lawyer) during his trial at The Hague, Vujacic told Reuters.

He is convinced that with the help of God he will win.

Karadzic is twice indicted for genocide for the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica in 1995 and for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo. Some 11,000 people died in the city from sniper fire, mortar attacks, starvation and illness.

Karadzic had wanted Serb areas of Bosnia to be linked to Serbia and other areas dominated by Serbs at a time when the Slobodan Milosevic, then Serbian president, was fanning nationalism in Serbia.

The former Bosnian Serb leader lived under an assumed name for years and worked as a doctor of alternative medicine. He wore thick glasses and grew a bushy beard and long hair, which he wore in a plaited topknot, to hide his famous face.

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