A London-based lawyer has become the first solicitor-advocate to appear as counsel in a case before a UN war crimes tribunal.

Roger Sahota, a partner at criminal defence firm SBS, has been instructed as co-counsel in a trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands.


He is representing Berislav Pusic, who has been charged on a 26-count indictment with crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Convention. Mr Sahota is being led by Bosnian trial attorney Fahruddin Ibrimisovic.


Mr Pusic is charged along with five others, including the former premier of the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosnia, Jadranko Prlic, and other senior members of his cabinet.


It is alleged that between 1991 and 1994 the defendants ordered the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and other non-Croats living in parts of Bosnia as they tried to annex parts of the country to create a Greater Croatian Republic under the direction of the late Croatian president Franco Tudjman. The prosecution alleges that he had agreed with the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to divide and annex parts of Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia.


All six defendants deny the allegations.


The trial is being heard by a senior panel of international judges at the ICTY, where the trial of Mr Milosevic was being heard until his death, and is expected to last for one year.


While a number of solicitors have previously been involved in the preparation of cases for the tribunal, none is thought to have appeared before the judges.


The matter came to Mr Sahota, who has appeared in numerous high-profile terrorism and extradition cases, through a referral.


He said: 'This is an extremely important and challenging case. It is one of the biggest trials the tribunal has ever staged in terms of the number of defendants, the geographical scope and the time period covered by the indictment.


'The ICTY rules of procedure and evidence combine elements of civil and common law jurisdictions. Adopting domestic principles to the hybrid adversarial model adopted by the trial chamber is proving to be a novel and rewarding experience.'