PARIS — Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb psychiatrist who became a nationalist wartime leader, has failed in his bid to get his war crimes trial in The Hague halted and have all charges thrown out for lack of sufficient evidence. But the United Nations judges hearing his case have dropped one of the two counts of genocide against him, the court announced Thursday.


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Radovan Karadzic in a courtroom in The Hague in 2009.


Mr. Karadzic will still be tried on one other count of genocide, namely in connection with the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 as well as nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity from the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.
The judges’ decision has come midway through the trial, after the prosecution had ended its case. Under tribunal rules, the defense can apply at that point to have parts or all of the case thrown out before the defense begins presenting its own arguments.
The count of genocide that was dropped from Mr. Karadzic’s case refers to a violent campaign led by Serb and Bosnian Serb forces and militia gangs to drive almost half a million non-Serbs from regions of Bosnia that were scheduled to become lands for Serbs only. The well-planned and systematic campaign that happened mainly in 1992 included the large-scale killing of civilians and the hauling of thousands off to concentration camps; houses, schools and religious sites of Muslims and Catholics were razed and villages were then given Serb names.
The question of whether that campaign entailed genocide, or amounted to crimes against humanity, has been argued long and hard in other trials at the tribunal, but no other judges have found genocide outside Srebrenica. The controversy has often upset the victims and survivors of the brutal campaign.
In dropping the genocide count, the judges in the Karadzic case acknowledged that the violent Bosnian campaign caused much suffering, but they said they were not provided enough evidence to conclude that the actions were intended as genocide. The crime of genocide specifically requires proof of the intention to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic or religious group.
Former President Slobodan Milosevic was also charged with genocide for helping to engineer that Bosnian “ethnic cleansing” campaign, but he died before his trial ended.
Thursday’s decision may also affect the trial of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general, who often worked closely with Mr. Karadzic, at the time his political superior.
Mr. Mladic is similarly charged with two counts of genocide — for Srebrenica and for the Bosnian campaign. His trial began in May and was quickly suspended when judges found that the prosecution had not finished sharing all of its evidence with the defense. The hearings are scheduled to resume in July.