THE HAGUE, Netherlands: Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic should be sentenced to life imprisonment if he is convicted of “a substantial portion” of the crimes he stood trial for at a UN war crimes tribunal, prosecutors said in a written brief published Friday.

Summing up their vision of Karadzic’s trial, prosecutors called him the “pre-eminent political and military leader of the Bosnian Serbs and their forces” during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia that left 100,000 people dead.

Karadzic is charged with 11 crimes including genocide for allegedly directing Bosnian Serb atrocities throughout the war, including the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. He insists he is innocent.

The prosecution’s “final trial brief” was filed confidentially in August; a public, redacted version was released Friday by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

It dismissed most of Karadzic’s defense witnesses as “demonstrably lacking in credibility,” calling much of their testimony “confused, contradictory, vague, evasive, and often plainly absurd.”

Karadzic and his former military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic, who is on trial separately at the UN court, both insist their actions were intended to protect Bosnia’s Serb population. Karadzic’s final brief was to be published Monday, the tribunal said. On the same day, prosecutors and Karadzic are scheduled to begin closing arguments in his long-running trial.