Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has claimed he should be "rewarded" instead of being charged over the Bosnian conflict, as he defended himself against charges of war crimes and genocide at his trial in The Hague.
Known as "the Beast of Bosnia", Karadzic, 67, faces 10 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including a bloody massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb troops at Srebrenica in July 1995, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
He told the court: "Instead of being accused, I should have been rewarded for all the good things I have done.
"I did everything in human power to avoid the war. I succeeded in reducing the suffering of all civilians.
"I proclaimed numerous unilateral ceasefires and military containment. And I stopped our army many times when they were close to victory."
He described himself as a peacemaker, a "mild man, a tolerant man", a claim which led to cries of "liar!" from the public gallery.
Karadzic also said he was a “physician and literary man” who had been dragged into the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.
“Everybody who knows me knows I am not an autocrat, I am not aggressive, I am not intolerant.
“On the contrary, I am a mild man, a tolerant man with great capacity to understand others.”
His wartime military chief, General Ratko Mladic, is also on trial in The Hague, on the same charges, and face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.
Karadzic is also charged over his spearheading of the 44-month siege of Sarajevo from 1992, where an estimated 12,000 people were killed. 56,000 were wounded, including 15,000 children.
Snipers deliberately targeted civilians, by hiding in high-rise buildings. Women and children, firefighters and UN peacekeepers were all killed by single bullets to the head.
Even a funeral procession was targeted, and in 1994 the city's market was hit by mortars, which killed 66 people.
Starving residents dug tunnels to smuggle in food, fuel and weapons, with many forced to eat grass to survive.
Karadzic was arrested on a bus in Belgrade in 2008, looking gaunt and with a bushy, white beard, having been on the run for 13 years.
On Tuesday, Karadzic claimed the number of victims was less than a quarter than the figures quoted in the media. "As time passes this truth will be stronger and stronger, and the accusations and the propaganda, the lies and hatred, will get weaker and weaker," he said.