( CNN ) -- Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic intends to skip the start of his war crimes trial because he says he has had too little time to prepare , a spokeswoman for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said Thursday . Radovan Karadzic wrote to the court to say he would not attend the trial . The trial is still expected to begin on Monday despite Karadzic 's intended absence , which he announced in a letter to the court , the spokeswoman said . `` The tribunal judges control court proceedings . They are the only relevant body that can make a decision about the readiness of the case for trial , '' she said . Karadzic , who is defending himself , faces genocide charges and nine other counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Bosnian Muslims , Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbian civilians during the brutal and bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s . The conflict introduced the phrase `` ethnic cleansing '' into the lexicon describing war crimes , as different factions in multi-ethnic Yugoslavia sought to kill or drive out other groups . Karadzic was arrested last year after more than a decade on the run and was found to have been living in Belgrade , the capital of Serbia , and practicing alternative medicine in disguise . In a letter dated Wednesday and made public Thursday , Karadzic complains that he has not been given the relevant case material on time -- and he says the volume of material would have been too much to go through even if he had received it promptly . `` I ask Your Excellencies -- why and how is it possible that the prosecution is allowed to literally bury me under a million of pages , only to start disclosing relevant material many months after my arrest ? '' he writes . `` Why and how is it possible that the prosecution is allowed to file its final indictment against me on the eve of the planned trial date ? '' Karadzic says he should not be penalized for representing himself . `` No lawyer in this world could prepare defense within this period of time , '' he writes . `` I hereby inform you that my defense is not ready for my trial that is supposed to begin as scheduled , on the 26th of October , and that therefore I shall not appear before you on that date . '' He promised to continue his preparations in `` the most intensive way '' and inform the court when he is ready . The genocide charges against him stem partly from the most notorious massacre of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina , once a part of Yugoslavia . More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebrenica when ethnic Serb troops overran a U.N. `` safe area '' in July 1995 . It was the worst European massacre since World War II . Prosecutors at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague accuse Karadzic of responsibility . `` On 8 March 1995 , Karadzic instructed Bosnian Serb forces under his command to create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival for the inhabitants of Srebrenica , amongst other places , '' the tribunal said in a statement this month . The Hague indictment also says Karadzic committed genocide when forces under his command killed non-Serbs during and after attacks in more than a dozen Bosnian municipalities in the early stages of the war . Karadzic , who faces life in prison if he is convicted , denies the charges . The court can not impose the death penalty . When he was arrested in July 2008 , Karadzic had grown a large white beard and let his famous steel-gray hair grow long and turn white . He had spent more than 13 years in hiding , during which he practiced alternative medicine at a Belgrade clinic . Karadzic 's arrest leaves his former military commander , Ratko Mladic , as the highest-ranking fugitive still being sought by the war crimes tribunal . Prosecutor Alan Tieger told the court in July that the case against Karadzic would take approximately 490 hours . That means prosecutors are likely to need more than a year to lay out their evidence , a court spokeswoman said . The 1992-95 Bosnian war was the longest of the wars spawned by the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s . Backed by the government of then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic , Bosnian Serb forces seized control of more than half the country and launched a campaign against the Muslim and Croat populations . Karadzic was removed from power in 1995 , when the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian war barred anyone accused of war crimes from holding office . Milosevic died in 2006 while on trial at The Hague .
He says he is skipping the details of his war crimes and his trial . Former Bosnian Serb soldiers convicted over atrocities during Balkans conflict . Thousands died during the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1990s .